It's been a while, but here's my last comment of the year. As I predicted December has seen a nice Santa Claus rally to end the year. Yesterday's volume was the lightest traded day of the year, so you can expect more of the same heading into the last couple of trading days. One tidbit I thought was interesting, courtesy of the WSJ, is that during the Dow's 115 year history, the Dow has risen 80% of the time over the final five trading days, registering an average gain of 1.2% over those final five days. Looking at the S&P 500, the index has risen during the last week of the year 77% of the time, averaging a 0.9% gains, which compares to average gain of 0.15% for all weeks since 1928. Of course, with today's down day, led by banking and energy stocks, we are in danger of ending the last week in the red.
Lastly, on a positive note to begin 2012, courtesy of Kathy Lien at GFT Advisors, stocks usually perform well in election years --–and, over the past five decades, stocks fell only four out of the 17 presidential-election years. (With 2008 being the outlier due to the banking and credit crisis)
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