Jeffrey Hirsch and the Stock Trader's Almanac: The Origins of Seasonal Trading

The systematic study of market seasonality in the United States traces its roots to one man: Yale Hirsch, who in 1966 published the first Stock Trader's Almanac — a spiral-bound reference book that catalogued decades of market data into actionable seasonal patterns. His son Jeffrey Hirsch has continued and expanded this work, making the Almanac the most widely referenced seasonal market guide in the world.

Yale Hirsch: The Founder

Yale Hirsch began his career as a market researcher in the 1950s, long before the era of personal computers and electronic databases. Working with paper records and manual calculations, he identified several recurring patterns in stock market data that appeared to repeat with remarkable consistency across different economic cycles and market regimes.

His most important discovery — what he called the Best Six Months strategy — was published in the 1986 edition of the Almanac. The finding was simple but powerful: the stock market generated the vast majority of its gains in the six-month period from November through April, while the May through October period was historically flat to negative. This observation, later popularized as "Sell in May and Go Away," has been validated by subsequent academic research and remains one of the most studied anomalies in financial economics.

Jeffrey Hirsch: Expanding the Legacy

Jeffrey Hirsch joined his father's work in the 1990s and became editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac in 2001. Under his leadership, the Almanac has expanded from a stock market reference to a comprehensive seasonal investing framework covering equities, sectors, commodities, and macroeconomic cycles.

Jeffrey's most significant original contribution is the Super Boom thesis — a long-term macroeconomic forecast first published in 2010 predicting a 500%+ secular bull market in U.S. equities driven by post-crisis government spending (which creates inflation) and paradigm-shifting technology (which creates productivity gains). The original Dow Jones target of 38,820 was achieved in April 2024, and the updated target is Dow 62,430 by approximately 2030, with artificial intelligence identified as the next culturally enabling technology driving the next leg of the boom.

The Five Key Seasonal Indicators

Jeffrey Hirsch's analytical framework is built around five core seasonal indicators, each with a long track record and a specific predictive function.

The January Barometer — "as January goes, so goes the year" — was discovered by Yale Hirsch in 1972. It states that the direction of the S&P 500 in January predicts the direction for the full calendar year with approximately 83% historical accuracy. The logic is that January reflects the investment intentions of institutional managers who are deploying capital at the start of the new year.

The Santa Claus Rally covers the last five trading days of December and the first two trading days of January. Yale Hirsch observed that this seven-day window has been positive in approximately 79% of years since 1950. A failure of the Santa Claus Rally — defined as a negative return over this window — has historically been a warning signal for the coming year.

The First Five Days of January indicator observes that the direction of the S&P 500 in the first five trading days of January has predicted the full-year direction with approximately 83% accuracy. Combined with the Santa Claus Rally and the January Barometer, these three indicators form what Hirsch calls the January Trifecta — when all three are positive, the full year has been positive approximately 90% of the time.

The Best Six Months strategy (November–April) and its MACD-timing refinement are the most actionable of the five indicators, providing specific entry and exit signals for rotating between equities and cash or bonds on a seasonal basis.

The Presidential Election Cycle — the four-year pattern of market performance tied to the U.S. presidential election calendar — is the fifth major indicator. The pre-election year (year 3 of the cycle) has historically been the strongest, averaging approximately +16.8% for the S&P 500, as incumbent administrations stimulate the economy ahead of elections.

The Commodity Trader's Almanac

In 2007, Jeffrey Hirsch co-authored the Commodity Trader's Almanac with Scott Barrie, extending the seasonal analysis framework to commodity futures markets. The book documented seasonal patterns for dozens of commodities across energy, metals, and agriculture, drawing on decades of futures price data and the same rigorous methodology applied to the stock market Almanac.

The Commodity Seasonal Calendar at comcalend.com builds on this foundation, synthesizing Hirsch's commodity research with data from Moore Research Center, Purdue University, Equity Clock, and other credible sources to provide free, accessible seasonal signals for 13 major commodities. Supported by Walmer Portal.