Week Before Christmas is at least Twice as Good as the Average Week

This is the beginning of a tricky, low volume week for the stock market. Money is being put to work and getting reallocated. Different market participants are doing different things for different reasons. The selling of losers and buying of winners seems to be a common theme for both retail (for tax reasons) and institutional investors (to make themselves look better). But historically this tends to be a much better than average week for the stock market as a whole.

The good folks over at Bespoke Investment Group crunched the numbers nicely:

"As shown, both recently and longer term, the S&P 500 has averaged nice gains during the week before Christmas. Over the last ten years, the index has averaged a gain of 0.43%.  Over the last 20 years -- 0.81%, 50 years -- 0.51%, and 100 years -- 0.30%.  Since 1928, the S&P 500 has averaged a gain of 0.15% during all one-week periods, so the S&P 500 has historically doubled the average weekly return in the week before Christmas."

Also See:

Santa Clause is Coming to Town (?) (Barry Ritholtz)

Bumper Crop of New Lows (StockTradersAlmanac)

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