Yes, there are peaks and valleys that appear when you view charts of stock prices. I am taking the closing index price of the S&P 500 starting from 1975 till today. The average stock market return for 10 years is 9.2%, according to Goldman Sachs data for the past 140 years. This calculator uses sixty-odd years of S&P 500 data to let you see for yourself. Everyday Tips – I know, time flies – 40 years ago as 1971 puts that in perspective for sure. The best-performing months are year-end and April. My last Python post was 4 months ago in February. It’s interesting stuff. For example, the last three months of 2018 were terrible for the stock market, where the S&P500 tanked 19.9% from its peak. Sure, performance from one month to the next can be quite different. Here’s what I did: I pulled data (source: Yahoo Finance) showing the opening market value and the closing market value for each month, dating back 40 years. Some of the explanations are portfolio rebalancing, harvesting tax losses, coming back from vacation and etc. Stock Returns by Month: Interesting Historical Trends, Better Home vs. November through January is a particularly strong stretch; Measuring Performance Come to think of it, the Python posts which I have written in the past are actually references to teach my future self today. But statistically speaking, those are the bad months or rather “best time” to invest. That’s why I say you can follow along with the codes and replace it with whatever stock symbols you are interested in. Thank you. The ten year time-frame that Jack Bogle, Vanguard, and others are referring to above, is not exactly “long term” in the stock market. I’m not an investment professional, so don’t take this as advice, just as my own analysis and thoughts. This is helpful. Your actual financial decisions are your own responsibility. . Negative stock market returns occur, on average, about one out of every four years. There was a river that on average was 3 feet deep – 1 foot deep most of the way and 9 feet deep in one spot. Savings Calculator Some months see prices increase, other months see prices decline. Do some months have significantly different stock market returns than others? Just like formal education, I think I have almost forgotten everything. Dow Jones Djia 100 Year Historical Chart Macrotrends. It is impossible to know, until after the fact. What Do You Call Someone Who is Careful With Money? Are there some months in which the market performs better than others, over the long term? We had the best run since 1939! DCF Calculators, Retirement Calculator Doesn’t much surprise me to see January and December leading in the long term. We don’t need the Closing price columns and we need to replace the 0s with NA. That will have an effect on your overall stock returns and portfolio […]. There is still some meat on the table until July. Of all the monthly losses throughout the 45 years, which month has the highest loss. Hopefully that comes true. This even happens from day to day, and within days as well. You just need to change the symbol ticker from ^GSPC to ^DJI. Buy again in October, after the September Swoon. Even if buying or selling decisions aren’t made with this method, it might help to understand market movements and calm down jittery responses to month-by-month volatility. Here is the visual bar chart of the S&P 500 historical monthly returns over the past 45 years. So, I incorporated all of the data which I had pulled, and analyzed performance from 1971 to 2010. Inheritances and Blended Families: Who’s the Priority? This would group all the common months together and calculate the mean for each column. What does it look like when more abnormal returns occur? Credit Card Calculator The historical stock market returns by month do show some recurring patterns. After all, they are pretty much correlated. So you will have 12 rows (12 months) and 3 columns (monthly return, gains, losses) of average for each month. From the results, it looks like some months really are significantly better than average. Interesting stuff. It would be like an if-else statement. Social Security and September is the "danger" month, with an overall negative return. Do some months have significantly different stock market returns than others? While extreme returns can happen, almost 40% of annual returns have fallen within the -10% to 10% range.. Recessions and Recoveries. Since 2010, sharing my journey to help you squirrel away your money and build net worth!