Full Title: Seasonal Stock Market Trends: The Definitive Guide to Calendar-Based Stock Market Trading

Author: Jay Kaeppel (Twitter @jaykaeppel)

Publisher/Date: Wiley (2009)

List Cost/Pages: $60 / 298 pages

Cover Notes:
In many aspects of life, things occur in a repetitive pattern. And while things do in fact change over time, the basic underlying idea of seasons and seasonality is that even though things do change, they often return to a particular state over and over again—often in a very predictable way.

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, author Jay Kaeppel—one of the most experienced profes-sionals in the areas of seasonality and stock, options, and futures trading—has examined a wide range of seasonal and cyclical trends as they relate to the stock market over the past century. Now, with Seasonal Stock Market Trends, he shares his extensive insights with you.

Written in a straightforward and accessible style, this book will show you how following the calendar—and taking advantage of consistently strong seasonal trends—can help you to achieve long-term stock market success. Kaeppel introduces you to a wide array of seasonal stock market trends—most based on 70 to 100 plus years of actual market data—and identifies objective “rules” for utilizing each one. Along the way, he also presents a process that allows you to track the performance of a given strategy, so that you can gauge its overall effectiveness.

Just a few of the trends touched upon include:

  • Holiday Seasonal Trends, which looks at the trading days surrounding market holidays to reveal some surprising results
  • Monthly Seasonal Trends, which focuses on a variety of intramonth market trends and breaks the month down into clearly defined favorable and unfavorable trading days
  • Repetitive Time Cycles of Note deals with the performance of the stock market in relation to three specific, and repetitive, time cycles—the 212-week cycle, the 40-week cycle, and the 53-day cycle
  • Sell in May and Go Away thoroughly analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of breaking the year into two six-month periods for investment purposes

Rounding out this detailed discussion is a chapter devoted to using a variety of seasonal trends to build three separate investment models—the Long-Only Method, the Long-Only Plus Leverage (LOPL) Method; and “Jay’s Ultimate Seasonal Barometer” (or JUSB). These detailed models are designed to generate specific buy and sell signals, and require no interpretation on your part.

Seasonal Stock Market Trends will help you incorporate seasonal trends into your current investment or trading endeavors and put you in a far better position to generate consistent profits over time. Free of complicated trading systems and so-called surefire secrets, this book will set you on a solid path to finding opportunities in the markets based on recurring seasonal patterns.

Stendahl Comments:
I’ve personally been fascinated with calendar-based trading for a number of years. Most books I’ve read on the subject have never gone into enough detail providing factual historical results. Seasonal Stock Market Trends covers the subject well … focusing on all aspect of calendar-based trading in great detail. It’s an easy read, full of step-by-step analysis. Chapters include analysis of the January effect, holiday seasonal trends, yearly seasonal trends, repetitive cycles and election cycles. This is in fact a definitive guide to calendar-based trading. I give it my highest rating 5 out of 5.