Sell In May And Go Away
Categories: Financial Theory
It's a Wall Street aphorism. Why? Well, it just seems like summers are bad for long equity investors. The bigger question? Why are markets soft in the summer? Well...ever been to The Hamptons in the summer? Watch the awesomely weird TV series, Summer House, for details.
Historically, the data would tell you that summer is not a great time to be long equities. They do tend to go down in the summer. Every summer? Not at all. But maybe 2/3 of the time. So the data doesn't help all that much, but maybe if you're on the fence about staying in your investing seat or working on your putting and short game, you opt for the latter and sober up over Labor Day Weekend.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What are January Effect and San...3 Views
Finance allah shmoop what are the santa claus rally and
the january effect Well we actually attended a santa claus
rally last december the energy in the arena was off
the charts Who knew elves could be that loud Yeah
really Ok so in finance land a santa claus rally
is well something else it refers to a rally or
rise in stock prices during the month of december and
they don't even need magical reindeer Teo you know achieve
lift off Why december Because according to you our desk
calendar december is the last month of the year on
for a whole bunch of tax and accounting reasons there
are trades that need to happen before the end of
the calendar year like professional funds need to have a
certain minimum amount invested in the stock market rather than
holding cash or there was some huge hot stock that
they want to show that they at least own for
pa art of the year so they buy it in
december and all investors want to sell their losers either
for the tax loss or just because they don't want
those on their annual report that they owned a million
Shares of dog crap dot com so because everything is
better with acute see name attached well this onslaught of
activity has been termed the santa claus rally and generally
there is more buying than selling as optimism generally beats
pessimism this time of year So historically stocks have gone
up right around christmas All right so what about the
january effect Well because all the buying has bought up
the quote loose unquote shares in the market place or
rather the nervous nellies who kind of sort of wanted
to sell their shares have now sold them While there
simply isn't the supply of shares at lower prices available
for buyers to buy and so with the same demand
unless supply prices go up yeah eq on one first
week and to boot Yeah there's typically an increase in
stock prices after new year's which financial gurus have lovingly
named the january effect Or as mrs claus calls at 00:02:05.17 --> [endTime] santa's recovery period No