setember rolls on , page-51

An interesting viewpoint on the September effect on the US sharemarket. Due to copyright I am restricted to only quoting two paragraphs, and the full article can be accessed from the below link.

loki


http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc090914.htm


September 14, 2009
Conditional Expectations and September Seasonality

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

"The fact is that yes, on average, the combined September-October period has historically produced slight declines for the S&P 500 whether you look back since 1870, 1900, 1940 or 1970. But the variance around that slightly negative return is large enough that it's really misguided, in my view, to base predictions on it. All you can say is that maybe in a repeated game of 20 or 30 years, you might find that avoiding stocks in September and October slightly reduces risk without surrendering long-term returns.

Saying “September and October are the worst months for stocks” simply isn't all that scary, because again, the average change in the S&P 500 is just slightly below zero, and the average total return including dividends is still slightly positive (though generally less than T-bills)."