Just a thought, here is a quote from the Stock Traders Almanac:
"As the holiday season begins, the
marketâs bias turns bullish most years
in November which leads the best
three-month span of the year. Ranked
#2 on the S&P 500 and #3 on the Dow
Jones Industrials since 1950âand
third for NASDAQ since 1971â
November begins the Best Six Months
for the Dow and S&P, and the Best
Eight Months for NASDAQ.
Small caps come into favor during
November but they truly outpace their
big cap brethren starting the last two
weeks of the year. Small stocks generally
continue to soar through the early
part of the year. In years past small-cap
domination existed primarily in January
and was known as the âJanuary
Effectââit is now more like a November-
to-February effect. Pages 106 and
114 of the 2005 Almanac discuss this
in detail. (The just-released Stock Traderâs
Almanac 2006 updates this pattern
on pages 104 and 110. Almanac
Investor subscriberâs complimentary
copies will be shipped ASAP.)
The S&P 500 has been up the week
before Thanksgiving week eleven of
the last thirteen years, 2003 broke the
eleven-year run. The day before
Thanksgiving Day and the day after
have combined for only 9 losses in 53
years on the Dow Jones Industrials.
The best strategy seems to be going
long into weakness Tuesday or
Wednesday and staying in through the
following Monday or exiting into
strength.
The Dow Jones Industrials lost
ground in only three Novembers in the
last fifteen post-election years since
1945 (all during Vietnam); the S&P
500 was down only four. Check the
back page calendar for bullish and
bearish days as well as option expiration
week seasonality.
---------------------------------
In 1986 Yale Hirsch made the
groundbreaking discovery that most
of the marketâs gains occur during six
consecutive months of the year,
November through April. To this day
this bullish bias continues to persist.
The accompanying bar chart of
average monthly gains for the Dow
Jones Industrials from 1950 to 2004
clearly illustrates the out-performance
of the months November, December,
January, March and April. February
remains the weak link in the Best Six
Months. October and July do possess
respectable average gains but it is still
clear that the Worst Six Months, May
through October, pall in comparison
to the Best Six Months.
Our simple strategy of being
invested during the Best Six Months
of the year and then switching into
cash, a money market account or
other fixed income vehicle has produced
impressive gains with limited
risk by avoiding many of the sharp
declines that have occurred over the
last 55 year during the Worst Six
Months. A hypothetical investment in
1950 of $10,000 in the Dow during
the Best Six Months grew to nearly
$500,000 versus a loss for the same
$10,000 in the Worst Six Months. This
is illustrated on page 50 of the
Almanac."
I'm always flat EOD so I really don't care either way.