January barometer

According to Wall Street lore as the first five days of January go, so goes the month. And in case you've forgotten, the first five trading days of 2014 were down. So, in keeping with tradition, the S&P 500 also finished lower for the first month of the year. Check. Next up is the old...

The saying, “As goes January, so goes the year,” has been commonplace on Wall Street since 1972 when introduced by Yale Hirsch. From 1950 through 1984, full year returns correlated with January’s performance at a rate of roughly 75 percent. Per efficient market theorem, this trend should have...