Sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur | investingLive

Rosh Hashanah starts today so Shanah Tovah to anyone celebrating.

For stock markets though, it’s generally not a reason to cheer. The old adage on Wall Street is “Sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur”.

That touches on a poor period of seasonality in late September. As Bank of America notes, that the final 10 days of September seen an average decline of 1.1% in US stocks dating back to 1928. Mike Zaccardi notes that the Rosh Hashanah/Tom Kippur period specifically averages -0.5% in the S&P 500.

Yom Kippur ends at nightfall on October 2.

So far this year, the market has bucked the trend of seasonal weakness in the S&P 500 but futures are down 0.3% at the moment.