Sell In May?

[Don]

There's an old adage for the stock market that says
"Sell in May and walk away."

Has anyone actually researched this to see if it's good advice?


If it is, this might be a good time to rebalance the portfolio away from stocks.

[mathjak107]

It hasn’t been a good idea for years

[barrett]

There's an old adage for the stock market that says
"Sell in May and walk away."

Has anyone actually researched this to see if it's good advice?


If it is, this might be a good time to rebalance the portfolio away from stocks.

Never researched it but just found this 1950-2017 monthly S&P returns data with a quick Google search:

https://www.marketvolume.com/analysis/m ... rmance.asp

In that span some months have been better than others on average, but you can find plenty of examples of a historically mediocre month where in a particular year that one month accounted for most of the market gains.

Additionally, on that chart you can see that June-Spetember has been the weakest stretch in terms of returns but that on average they have still been slightly positive.

Mathjak is obviously correct that it's a bad idea. Also consider tax consequences and how much you'd have to actually sell in order to make any real difference even if the old adage was correct. Best to just stick with whatever your asset allocation is and only re-balance if you've hit a band anyway.

Just my .02$.

[pp4me]

I don't think anybody ever came up with a catchy rhyme to tell you when to get back in the market.

So here goes....

Sell in May and Go away.

Buy in October and try to stay Sober.

(Sorry but words that rhyme with October are hard to come by).

[mathjak107]

Sell in may and go away ...

Just Don’t buy Treasuries today ...

Buy some gold ,yes you may

Put it away for a rainy day

[Don]

It's almost May.

Just sayin.

[glennds]

It's almost May.

Just sayin.

The way things are going so far, it looks like it would have been good advice this year. At least for my portfolio

[mathjak107]

For the pp selling even Jan 2 would have produced better results.

Pp may be up about 2% ytd if that much

I show

Tlt down 13.45%

Gold down 4.05%

Vti up 9.24%

Shy flat