So I haven't done a poll here in ages. With holiday season now fully upon us I thought it would be cool if we could have this Santa rally poll. Will Santa deliver with a SCR (Santa Claus Rally) this holiday? The official SCR that is gauged by Wall Streeters uses the final 5 trading days of the current calendar year and the first 2 of the new year. So going by that, the starting point for this particular poll wouldn't officially begin until this Friday, using tomorrow's (Thursday's) closing value in the cash SPX. It will run until the market close on Wednesday, January 3rd. Thus, we won't know the final results of the SCR until after the close on that Wednesday. But, have no fear! I've made tracking the SCR super easy as I normally have by putting it up on a Google spreadsheet that you guys can all view. Which updates every few minutes w/o even a page refresh. [CLICK ME!] I've included some of the other major indices into the fray like the DJ30 the Nazzy and Rutty, etc. But, I believe the one that is officially used to gauge the SCR uses the cash SPX. So, anyway w/o further ado here. I'd be curious to hear if anyone thinks there will be a rally during this upcoming 7-day SCR period? To make things interesting here, let's call a successful SCR a gain in the SPX of over +0.50% at a bare minimum during the 7-day stretch. If the SPX ends either +/-0.50% or less then we'll just call it a FLAT SCR. Vote away. Will try to update things daily as we go, but no grantees as I'll be pretty busy during this holiday stretch until January.
will admit, i'm not feeling quite as bullish as some for next year. lots of headwinds that could potentially upset the applecart. going with a down SCR period. which i feel could possibly have some negative implications for the full year next year. we shall see
Nope, he's drunk as hell and he ain't in the mood for a rally....reindeer food has gone up 1400% since PedoJoe took office and he's pissed.
Official Santa Claus Rally Starts Tomorrow! It is not a trading strategy; it is an indicator. To wit: “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall.” Yesterday’s selloff was a great setup. Just what the Santa Claus Rally needed. The Street has been buzzing about the Santa Claus Rally for three months now. Most still get it wrong. It’s not the yearend rally, the Q4 rally that runs from Halloween through January. Yes, November, December and January are the best three months of the year, but they are not the Santa Claus Rally. Santa Claus Rally was devised by Yale Hirsch in 1972 and published in the 1973 Stock Trader’s Almanac. The “Santa Claus Rally” is the last 5 trading days of the year plus the first 2 of New Year. This year it begins on the open on December 22 and lasts until the second trading day of 2024, January 3. Average S&P 500 gains over this seven trading-day range since 1969 are a respectable 1.3%. It is not a trading strategy; it is an indicator. Failure to have a Santa Claus Rally tends to precede bear markets or times when stocks could be purchased at lower prices later in the year. Down SCRs were followed by flat years in 1994, 2005 and 2015, two nasty bear markets in 2000 and 2008 and a mild bear that ended in February 2016. As Yale Hirsch’s now famous line states, “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall.” Stay tuned for more on the rest of my January Indicator Trifecta and sign up for my newsletter to get my official readings and analysis. And get the 2024 Stock Trader’s Almanac as a free bonus. https://stocktradersalmanac.com/LandingPages/get-Almanac-for-free.aspx
Here Comes the Santa Claus Rally “If Santa should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall.” —Yale Hirsh One of the little-known facts about the Santa Claus Rally (SCR) is that it isn’t the entire month of December; it’s actually only seven days. Discovered in 1972 by Yale Hirsch, creator of the Stock Trader’s Almanac (carried on now by his son Jeff Hirsch), the real SCR is the final five trading days of the year and first two trading days of the following year. In other words, the official SCR is set to begin tomorrow, Friday, December 22, 2023. Historically, it turns out these seven days indeed have been quite jolly, as no seven-day combo is more likely to be higher (up 79.5% of the time), and only two combos have a better average return for the S&P 500 than the 1.32% average return during the official Santa Claus Rally period. Here’s a chart we shared at the start of the month, showing that the latter half of December is when most of the seasonally strong gains occur. Of course, this year is anything but normal, with huge gains the first part of the month. These seven days tend to be in the green, so that is expected. But fun trivia stat, the SCR has been higher the past seven years and hasn’t been higher eight years in a row since the ‘70s. The all-time record was an incredible 10-year winning streak in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Here we show all the SCR periods since the tech bubble and how the S&P 500 does after each. The bottom line is that what really matters to investors is when Santa doesn’t come, as Mr. Hirsch noted in the quote at the start of this blog. Here we show some recent times investors were given coal during these seven days, and the results after aren’t very good at all. The past five times (going back 30 years) that the SCR was negative saw January down as well. Notably, there was no SCR in 2000 and 2008, not the best times for investors, and potentially some major warnings that something wasn’t right. Lastly, the full year was negative in 1994 and 2015 after no Santa. We like to say in the Carson Investment Research team that hope isn’t a strategy, but I’m hoping for some green during the SCR! Finally, the average gains each year for the S&P 500 is 9.1% and the index is higher 71.2% of the time. But when there is an SCR, those numbers jump to 10.2% and 72.4%, falling to only 5.0% and 66.7% when there is no Santa. Sure, this is only one indicator, and we suggest following many more indicators to base your investment decisions, but this is clearly something we wouldn’t ignore either. The bottom line is stocks are at or near all-time highs, we’ve been quite vocal about why stocks would do well this year, and we don’t see any major reasons not to expect Santa to come once again in 2023.
here is the official starting point for this year's SCR period: i'll try to update this thread with the SCR performance after every market close until its conclusion on jan. 3rd edit: but just in case i'm not around to update this daily, you guys can all view the SCR tracker on my google spreadsheet linked here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mRa9wS5xRpjChnbcL9IAt-9OuIBwP3oWb4L-GdL6D4E/edit?usp=sharing ^ | | click that link to view!
