Market Returns by Days of the Week

Here’s a look at market returns by days of the week. I did this last year but now I have more data including Saturdays. There was actually trading on Saturdays up to the early 1950s.

Here’s the breakdown: From 1932 through Monday, Wednesday was the best day of the week. In fact, Wednesday beat the four days (and Saturday) combined. Not including dividends, the S&P 500 returned 2,179% on Wednesdays, 502% on Thursdays, 244% on Tuesdays, 175% on Thursdays and an ugly -98.5% on Mondays.
Let me add what I hope is an obvious point—these stats don’t mean anything. It’s just fun trivia. You really can’t build a workable trading strategy around these numbers. We’re also talking about results of nearly 80 years of data. Even starting 20 years ago, Monday suddenly becomes the second-best day.
A few other points to mention. When Saturday trading was around, it was a great day. The market returned 389% on Saturdays from 1932 to 1952. Plus, even when there was Saturday trading, the market was often closed on Saturdays over the summer.
Statistically, the only really noticeable standout is the awful performance on Mondays. As I said, even that has diminished in recent years.
As strong as Wednesdays have been, they recently came through an awful stretch. The S&P 500 dropped on 10 straight Wednesdays this past fall. And they were big drops—the losing streak knocked one-third off the Wednesday’s historic return.
The S&P 500 is in the negative on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The market’s entire return has come just on Wednesday and Friday. Here’s a look at Wednesday against the rest of the week:

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on February 25th, 2009 at 12:06 am

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