Seasonal Patterns. Cramer's Take.

Jim Cramer of CNBC's mad money and The Street.com wrote an interesting piece yesterday on seasonal cyclicality in the markets. This is a very well known pattern where stocks have traditionally performed better in the last two months of the year and traditionally perform better in the late October early April time frame than over the summer months. It should be noted that this pattern has broken down somewhat over the past three years. Fall of 2007 was a very bad period for equities and stocks have been strong all through the summer months of this year. However, in a bullish phase like we've seen so far since March we should not underestimate Wall Street's desire to get paid in the form of performance bonuses. That's why many argue that stocks will do well through at least year end. Below is an excerpt of Cramer's take on this. Link @ the end. Highlights are mine.

"All morning {yesterday} I have listened to extended discussions about why the futures are down.....{Cramer} think{s} it is nonsense.There's no reason for the futures to be doing anything. We are, once again, presuming knowledge.
What's really going on? H-P paid a huge amount of money for 3Com...which is bullish..... And, like Macy's....Wal-Mart's keeping things nice and conservative for the holidays.There really isn't much more to it.
We have seen an important pattern ever since we got down to about 60 trading days in the year. There are now just 33. Every kind of 0.5% or 1% decrease has brought in buyers until we get so overbought.....that we get 2% to 3% declines.......But I am also conscious that there is so little time left in the year that you might not even get that."

Link: http://www.thestreet.com/p/_tsc/rmoney/jimcramerblog/10625680.html

*I do not own any of the stocks mentioned above personally or for client accounts but they are all likely elements in many of the different ETFs I own personally and for client accounts.