Four year presidential Cycle

This Stock Market Cycle occurs with great regularity, it pays to be aware of it. According to Stan Weinstein in his book “Secret for profiting in bull and bear markets”, the cycle unfolds like this:
First Year: “But even more important is the reality that no matter who is elected, the year following the election is usually a disaster.”
Second Year: “Historically, the probabilities are strong that in the second year the bear market will continue until a bottom is reached around midyear.”
Third Year: “The third year of the presidential term is the best one of the cycle”
Fourth Year: “The fourth year, which is the election year, is a choppy one”

Data compiled for the last 20 years and six presidents, concurs with Mr. Weinstein description of the Cycle as we can see in the following table.


The Dow Jones returned an average of 8.60% in the first year of the presidential Cycle of the last six presidents, also there is only one first year with a loss for the Dow of the six first years, making the first year a winner in 83% of the time.

In second years, the Dow averaged a gain of 6.11%, slightly less than in first years; also the Dow had 2 losing second years out of six, making the second year a winner 67% of the time.

We are now running President’s Obama third year of the Cycle that it’s to end in October 31 of this year, the data for the past 5 presidents shows us that there is not a single third year loser for the markets, and the average is 20.85% gain for the Dow.

Let’s see now the monthly averages.


According to data found at moneychimp.com, from 1950 to 2009, September is the worst month for the markets overall, it has the lowest average return and also lowest percent of winning over the years. September is a wining month only 43% of the time over the last 60 years.
November and December are the best months for stocks, December is the winner overall, and the three months period from November to January constitute the best quarter run for the markets

What to expect? The Dow ended at 11,118.40 in October 29, 2010, finishing the second year of Mr. Obama presidential Cycle. The Dow closed this past Friday, Sep, 16, 2011, at 11509, so as of date the Dow is returning 3.52% in this Third year. There are 30 trading days left until October 29.
For this September the Dow is showing a 0.90% loss to date, keeping in line with September tradition.

We can fairly expect more zigzags or another drop until the end of October, after that it may pay to enter the markets again. Anyway REMEMBER, these are just statistics, at the end the stock market will do not what politics or the gnomes of Zurich want, but what the economy tells it.