It's the Time of the Season... for Profits

One of the coolest and simplest band names of all time belonged to the "British Invasion" band called The Zombies.

Since the zombie horror subgenre has exploded in popularity in recent years, I'm sure there have been many an upstart band that would "die" to have that name...

If you don't remember the band by its name, there's a good chance that most of you will remember one of their catchy songs.

Both "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" were top 10 hits in the United States during 1964. Both were hummable tunes steeped in that classic mid-60s British Invasion sound.

But our title today comes from the band's most well-known hit, "Time of the Season."

The song, according to band members, was the last one written for what would be the band's breakup album.

In fact, the band did break up in the time between recording the album in 1967 and when it was finally released in 1969.

In contrast to their earlier work, this song (and indeed, the whole album) had a more modern psychedelic feel.

The haunting opening baseline punctuated by hand claps and the breathy "ahhh" vocal are instantly recognizable today.

Because the band was not able to support the album's release, it had only modest success in the United States (and was basically a flop back home in the UK).

But despite the lack of support, the evocative tune reached No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard charts and No. 1 on the U.S. Cashbox magazine charts.

And as icing on the cake, the album "Odessey and Oracle" (the album title was misspelled by the graphic artist and kept) continues to inspire critical acclaim. Rolling Stone magazine lists the album as No. 100 in its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.

Why the rock 'n' roll history lesson?

When I started to write today's article about an amazingly strong and profitable seasonal tendency in the stock market, that evocative opening lyric kept popping into my head: "It's the time of the season when love runs high..."

And it is indeed the time of the season when profits run high. Let me show you why...

Why We've Got Our Eye on This Seasonal Trend

People have always done things differently at different times of the year.

  • Around the New Year, there are many more gym memberships and Weight Watchers signups than any other time.
  • Back-to-school season sees an uptick in clothes and electronic sales.
  • The Christmas and Hanukkah season leads to a big retail sales increase driven by the gift-giving tradition.

So it's little wonder that the stock market has its own seasonal trends.

And I want to share one of my favorites with you today that goes by at least three different names...

  1. The Halloween Indicator
  2. The Best Six Months
  3. Sell in May and Go Away

This seasonal tendency holds that stocks offer their best returns during the Halloween through April period.

You can see from that simple description how all three of the monikers above are derived.

The Best Six Months name is pretty clear.

And the fact that it starts at the end of October easily explains "The Halloween Indicator" nickname.

This tendency is also the origin of the Wall Street adage, "sell in May and go away" - meaning to be out of the markets in the six worst months.

But what does this stock market anomaly mean for us here at The 10-Minute Millionaire?

As with many things here - the big deal is profits. This is a seasonal trend that has consistently churned out oversized returns for centuries.

Since the start of the 21st century, there have been just three years (2000, 2007, and 2008) where the Best Six Months did not live up to its historical standard. And it's important to note that those years marked the burst of the tech bubble and the great recession.

If you're skeptical about the validity of this seasonal tendency, let me show you a truly striking chart.

The folks at Chart of the Day produced this graphic that shows the gains made during the Best Six Months compared with those made from May to October:

The very thin grey line on top represents the total returns of the market since 1950. The dark blue line just below it shows returns made just in the November-April time frame.

The dark green line at the bottom is the return for being in the market only during the worst six months of every year, from May to October.

The difference is compelling. I might even call it stunning.

The Best Six Months has a researched history dating back to 1694. It has shown a statistically significant effect in every stock market that has been investigated by peer-reviewed papers (with the lone exception of a small island country in the Indian Ocean).

Some pundits have written, with a shorter-term data set, that while the Best Six Months has worked over the past few years, note that the period between May and October has also been strong (like this year).

I've crunched new numbers for you and despite one of the strongest, and longest, bull markets of this century (since March 2009), I'm happy to report that the Best Six Months indicator still holds true.

In fact, the "Worst Six Months" vastly underperformed in the following years:

  • 2010 (-0.3% versus +15.2%)
  • 2011 (-8.1% versus +11.5%)
  • 2012 (+1.0% versus  +13.1%)
  • 2016 (+2.9% versus  +12.1%)

That's four out of eight years in a strong bull market - dang this thing is good!

While this seasonality doesn't work every single time, it has continued to work, and to work well.

And in the competitive world of stock investing and trading, every proven edge that we can get is helpful.

When Two Worlds Collide

When we lay out our plan of attack now that the Best Six Months indicator is in effect, we have to factor in this year's unique market catalyst.

There's one thing hanging over the markets that - combined with the return of seasonal volatility - could drive volatility higher than it's been since the 2008 financial crisis.

And it's courtesy of the biggest "force multiplier" in the markets...

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10-Minute Millionaires know it as the "downfall of the easy money market."

A volatility storm that could completely transform the financial markets for the next five years - or more - will soon come into play.

The remarkable bull market we've seen since the 2008 financial crisis has been engineered by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which created money out of thin air to keep the system liquid. The Fed bought up billions of dollars in toxic assets from failing institutions as well as trillions in government bonds and mortgage securities, pushing fresh money out to the country's biggest financial institutions, money that then made it back into the system through lending and other efforts.

Buying tens of billions of dollars' worth of bonds every month adds up - to a cool $ 3.7 trillion (give or take a few billion) between 2009 and 2014.

Right now, the Fed's "balance sheet" - the assets on its books - sits at a whopping $4.5 trillion.

Together with almost a decade of near-zero interest rates, that additional $3.7 trillion has been propping up U.S. equity markets since the financial crisis.

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But it can't keep this bloated balance sheet forever.

Eventually, the Fed is going to have to "empty the vault" and trim those assets from its books.

And it could trigger the most explosive and the most unpredictable - in short, the most volatile - markets we've seen since 2008.

But this increased volatility isn't something to be scared of.

For traders, like us, the combination of these two events creates a trader's paradise that I'm calling a "New Millionaire's Market."

New market, new opportunities... but only for folks who are prepared to move...

That's why I want to share a radical giveaway with you today.

Because this market change is going to be so big - so complete - I want to give each and every one of you the chance to become a 10-Minute Millionaire Pro.

When I first brought this imminent market shift to my paid-up subscribers, I showed them how to turn this massive event into countless opportunities to profit with handpicked trades.

Since then, the subscribers that have followed my guidance have already pocketed four double-digit wins.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg for what I see coming down the pike.

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The post It's the Time of the Season... for Profits appeared first on 10-Minute Millionaire.

About the Author

D.R. Barton, Jr., Technical Trading Specialist for Money Map Press, is a world-renowned authority on technical trading with 25 years of experience. He spent the first part of his career as a chemical engineer with DuPont. During this time, he researched and developed the trading secrets that led to his first successful research service. Thanks to the wealth he was able to create for himself and his followers, D.R. retired early to pursue his passion for investing and showing fellow investors how to build toward financial freedom.

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