« Tim Harford on Subsidies | Main | Options Boom »

Historically, January has been a good month for the stock market but not in recent years. In 2000, January had its seven-year win streak broken. Since then, the S&P 500 has fallen in four of the six Januaries of this decade. (Yikes, is this really the seventh year of the decade??)

We’ve had some spectacular Januaries in the past. In 1975 and 1976, the S&P 500 rose over 12% in the first the month of the year. It jumped 13% in “the year we will not mention” (hint: between 1986 and 1988). The 25 Januaries from 1975 to 1999 average an annualized growth rate of 39.4%. The other 11 months together averaged 15.4%.

Posted by edelfenbein at January 1, 2006 5:17 PM