Sell in May and go away - so they saying goes. I wonder if there is a saying for July? Nonetheless, data is more important that sayings in my opinion. As the finance industry survives yet another 30 June, we're right into the month of July.
In today's chart we look at the average performance of stocks during the month of July over the last 100, 50, and 20 years. July has actually been the best month of the year for the Dow over the last 100 years with an average gain of 1.57%. Over the last 50 years, the Dow has averaged a gain of 1.02% in July, while over the last 20 years, the average July gain has been 1.32%.
Source: BIG
Notably, this time of the year has been weak for stocks over the last 20 years, but July is the one month that has bucked the negative trend. As shown in the table, July is the only month from May through September that has averaged positive returns over the last 20 years.
(As always, past performance is no guarantee of future results.)