What's in Store for December?

Below we highlight how often the Dow has had positive returns by month over the last 100 years.

As shown, the Dow has had gains in December 71% of the time, which is the best month by a wide margin. The next closest months are January and August at 63%. (Click to enlarge)

Comments

[Tomcat101]

It's the 29% of Decembers that are down that concerns me.

2009 Nov 30 06:13 PM

[SeekingTruth]

Always like this kind of historical data.
That said, a separate chart displayed just below the one presented (100 yrs) that showed each month's performance since 1950 would have made it even better.
And there are many more interesting ways to display the data also, such as showing each months average performance for each year of a Presidential Election Cycle, etc. would also be relevant and useful, at least to me.

2009 Nov 30 06:53 PM

[Kevin Mulhern]

I'd like to see the statistics on percentage of up Decembers after a 55%+ rally in the S&P

2009 Dec 01 01:13 AM

[Tomcat101]

Looking at the Yahoo S&P charts back to 1950, it looks like in years where there is a big rally, December is usually up or flat. December is often up sharply in a year like this.

Definitely no "crashes" to be found.

With that said, going back to 1950, we never had Obama in office before either... Closest thing to Obama is obvious- Jimmy Carter- but there were no huge rallies while he was in office.

So your guess is as good as mine. I think we continue to rally and then all hell breaks loose next year.


On Dec 01 01:13 AM Kevin Mulhern wrote:

> I'd like to see the statistics on percentage of up Decembers after
> a 55%+ rally in the S&P

2009 Dec 01 09:21 AM