Thoughts from CNNFN:
In fact, if you had invested $10,000 in 1950 and kept it in the S&P 500 only from November through April, that would have netted you $340,250. The same amount of money in the same stocks but from May through October would have netted you $11,138.
Nice trivia, but what good is it to me, you might be tempted to ask? This is the here and now, and some investors might, every now and then, have heard that past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Actually the December blast and good end of the year returns are far from freakish anomalies. And it sure beats than using the Superbowl winner as your forecasting tool.
"It's no guarantee, but it's not nonsense,” said John Manley, investment strategist for Salomon Smith Barney. There is a number of reasons why December tends to bring more than just Christmas and Hanukkah presents for investors.
At the end of the year, Manley pointed out, there's a lot of money flowing into the stock market as late comers rush to make the most of IRAs and 401(k)s, opening them and funding them. At the start of the next year, the smart money is getting in as early as it can, and companies fund pension plans and 401(k)s, explaining good January performance, too.
Bonus checks keep the pump primed
And although the markets anticipate the Christmas shopping season, Hirsch said, they don't always allow for the fact that many businesses start a new cycle in September. Companies borrow heavily to support the selling season, and the markets start noticing the payoff in November.
There are other factors to consider - cash bonuses start getting hashed out and given out in December, especially on Wall Street. That money has to go somewhere, and much of it ends up back in stocks.
And there's a lot of "window dressing” from mutual-fund managers in December, Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer of First Albany, pointed out. Managers buy into the best-performing stocks of the year and sell their dogs, "so they can say they're fully invested and in the right stocks.”
As a result there's a corresponding "January effect.” After the fund sell-off, investors realize some of the wrong stocks got sold and snap up bargains that December did wrong.
The great end-of-the-year performance is helped by the fact that the market is coming off the summer doldrums and its worst month, September. There are numerous factors explaining why the summer does so poorly, too, Manley said.
But chief among them are that many mutual funds restructure their portfolios then and close out their books that month. Also, many people come back from summer vacation and seem to lose a little heart that there are few new business initiatives and get depressed about prospects for the next year.
"In the summer, people seem to get concerned,” Hirsch agreed. "When they come back in the fall, panic sets in and it seems to go a little far.” Bear markets have almost always bottomed out in October as a result, he noted.
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