I usually run a seasonal analysis at the beginning of the trading month to look for consistent seasonal behavior in stocks. I also run this same analysis for the Santa Claus rally and other notable seasonal times.
To be brief. I look at the remainder of the January’s trading for my database of stocks. I look back 8 years to see if there are any stocks that consistent trade the same way during the analysis period for each of the 8 years. I compare to the SPY for the same period, so I can be sure there’s little or no market bias (SPY average for this test period was -1.07%)
For the remainder of January, only one stock made it to the list on the negative side. This stock was down for the remainder of January for each of the last 8 years. The stock is Overstock.com [OSTK].
Here are the results
OSTK return for the remainder of January
Jan-13 -10.28
Jan-12 -13.65
Jan-11 -7.05
Jan-10 -10.99
Jan-09 -0.18
Jan-08 -30.93
Jan-07 -1.22
Jan-06 -14.13
avg -11.16
I’m always cautious when there are extreme figures in one or two years, as these distort the average. The median for OSTK though is roughly -10% so that still makes it attractive to me. Of course there are no guarantees but so far January 2014 has started as a loser for OSTK
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