Turning to December, this month is widely known to be quite bullish, as Santa comes to town, people feel good, and stocks tend to do well. As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, since 1950, December has been the second best month of the year, with only November better. December had been the best month of the year until the historic 9.2% drop in 2018. As a result, December hasn’t been quite as strong over the past 10 and 20 years.
Breaking it down even more, a big rally in November can potentially steal some of December’s thunder. As after a 5% or 10% rally in November, the returns in December are more muted. The flipside to this though is if the S&P 500 is up more than 10% for the year (like 2020), then stocks have benefited from some performance chasing and have tended to do better.
What does it all mean? After the historic move in November, we wouldn’t be surprised to see below average returns in December. We do believe this is a new bull market and lasting economic cycle of growth, but overall sentiment is getting quite stretched and this increases the potential for some near-term weakness. Please read COVID-19 May Threaten The Economic Recovery for more of our near-term thoughts.
Ryan Detrick is chief market strategist for LPL Financial.
