January Barometer
Categories: Financial Theory
Witches believe you can learn a lot about your own life by reading your tea leaves at the bottom of your mug. Others think that you can predict the stock market’s performance for the rest of the year by only looking at its January performance, known as the January barometer.
The January barometer hypothesis is that if the stock market goes up in January, it’ll also go up in December, at the end of the year. This shockingly simplistic stock market barometer was not-so-shockingly hypothesized in the early 1970s.
Even though it’s a simple thought, it’s true that the S&P 500 rises for the rest of the year if it does so in January, and vice versa, if you look at historical trends. The predictive power of the January barometer was actually all right for a decade...until the 1980s (we all know a lot happened in the '80s).
Better to have thought and been wrong than to have not thought at all.
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