November 24, 2009: Thanksgiving Week
November 24th, 2009
Over the past nine years, there has generally been an upward bias to Thanksgiving Week. This can be attributed to many things but the most likely culprit is a consistent pre-emptive push by Wall Street anala-strategists to talk up “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving and among the busiest shopping days of the year) and the prospects of strong holiday-related retail activity leading into Christmas.
For the S&P 500 since 2000, there have been six positive Thanksgiving weeks with the largest gain coming in 2008 (12.03%). The weakest Thanksgiving week was in 2000 when the index lost 1.90% for the week.
Interestingly, two of the three down weeks in the series have come in the past three years.
Looking at the remainder of the year after Thanksgiving, the positive to negative performance ratio remained the same; six up and three down weeks. However, the largest gain was 5.08% (2003) and the largest loss was 6.08% (2002).
While historic statistics favor the bulls for Thanksgiving week and for the remainder of the year, from the week following Thankgiving to the end of each year since 2000, the market has produced smaller gains and larger losses than during Thanksgiving week itself.
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