Days of the Week
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

Just a few miscellaneous items, as 2003 winds down. Hope you all had a super prosperous year in the markets. I was far too conservative, myself, and significantly underperformed in my own portfolio. But I did well from 2000-2002, so I'm really not complaining.

The following is gleaned from both my own data as well as that from the "Stock Trader's Almanac: 2004" by Yale Hirsch & Jeffrey A. Hirsch.

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January can be a most volatile month, at least recent history reveals this. For example:

January 2000

The Dow Jones had finished up 1999 at 11497. The first five days of 2000 then witnessed the following point moves.

Day One?... -139
Day Two?.. -359
Day Three? +124
Day Four?. +130
Day Five?.. +269

Of course on January 14, 2000, the Dow hit its all-time high mark of 11722.

January 2003

Dow Jones finished up 2002 at 8341. Then, of the 21 trading days in 1/03, 12 had moves of 100 points or more (8 up, 4 down), though the index finished down for the month to 8053.

Days of the Week

According to the "Stock Trader's Almanac," for the period June 1952 - December 1989, Monday was far and away the worst day of the week, up only 44.5% of the time. [S&P 500] Fridays were the best, up 57.6%.

But then we went into a major reversal of the pattern from January 1990-May 2003.

Monday - up 54.3% of the time
Tuesday - up 49.2%
Wednesday - up 52.1%
Thursday - up 49.0%
Friday - up 54.2%

Overall, June 1952-May 2003

[Again, S&P 500]

Monday - up 47.1%
Tuesday - up 50.8%
Wednesday - up 55.9%
Thursday - up 52.0%
Friday - up 56.6%

Nasdaq had its inception in 1971. These patterns are interesting.

1971-89

Monday - up 40.9% of the time
Tuesday - up 51.2%
Wednesday - up 62.6%
Thursday - up 63.8%
Friday - up 67.2% [Oh, Happy Day???..]

1990-May 2003

Monday - up 51.9%
Tuesday - up 51.6%
Wednesday - up 57.5%
Thursday - up 55.7%
Friday - up 56.3%

Overall, 1971-May 2003

Monday - up 45.3% of the time
Tuesday - up 51.1%
Wednesday - up 61.3%
Thursday - up 60.5%
Friday - up 62.8%

2003 Tidbits

The market was up 60% of the time on Mondays as measured by the S&P 500. [Sorry, that's the only day I checked.]

The best week for the Nasdaq was 3/17-3/21, up 6.1%, which is not even in the Nasdaq's top twenty percentage gains since 1971.

The worst week for Nasdaq was 9/21-9/26, off 6.0%

The best week for the Dow Jones was also 3/17-3/21 (the start of the war), up 8.4%...the 4th best weekly percentage gain since 1950.

The worst week for the Dow was 1/20-1/24, off 5.3%.

In fact for the Dow Jones, 2003 was best epitomized by total lack of volatility. In only 5 weeks did the index advance or decline 3% or more. [Only once since the week ending May 2nd.] As you would expect this was not the case with Nasdaq which had 17 such weeks.

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Next week we return with a full statistical review, certainly more than you'll find anywhere else in one place.

Brian Trumbore

The securities markets are subject to the risks of fluctuating prices and the uncertainty of rates of return and yields inherent in investing and past performance is no guarantee of future results.