As Goes January So Goes the Year

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I have written and talked about this statistical superstition born out of trading almanacs of the "January Effect" which proposes that the month of January's direction (a green bar or a red bar) will determine the final close of the year as a whole. I plugged the data into a spreadsheet this year mid-January to get the updated statistic and for the last 97 years this adage has held true 68% of the time. Like all statistics when studying markets "nothing is 100%" but it is safe to say "more often than not" this is true.

The January 2025 Monthly open is -3.03% from the Friday close... SPY is going to open -2.19% as of writing this morning. We still have a whole week of trading days left in January to see how 2025 will MOST PROBABLY play out.

There's a lot of "reasons" talk this morning about some Chinese AI being the culprit of the selloff. I never take heed of the need for the media to publish digestible stories to give such reasons: they are never tradable prior to the event they claim and each is a one-off so knowing the "reason" (if even true) is totally worthless for making money.

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The more logical answer according to price which is far more actionable to traders is the failed breakout last Friday. While SPY made a new All Time High the Weekly itself failed to close to confirm it. Not following through on such a move is a clear bearish signal going into a weekend. Now THAT is a much better "reason" to be focused on this week (and every time it happens in the future).

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