Cross Currents & The Jewish Holidays.

Market strikes me as being buffeted today by competing currents.  On one hand you have the positive buzz out of Apple today where it is widely expected that they will release a new iPhone.  You also have a positive ruling on Euro-debt out of the German Constitutional Court.  This lets the ECB go ahead with their planned bond program and is a stabilizing factor in Europe.

On the other side you have the Israelis again saber rattling against Iran and the attacks on American embassies in both Egypt and Libya yesterday where we are just finding out that the American ambassador to Libya was killed.  On top of that stocks are very oversold.  Then there is this.  There is an old Wall Street saying which goes, “Buy Rosh Hashanah, Sell Yom Kippur.”  Like many words from the old hands it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  More than anything, if I had to wager, I'd guess that it mostly reflects the seasonal patterns of weakness in September.  However this old saw  gets tossed around every autumn when the “Jewish high holidays” draw near.  Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement.   

For those interested the Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur period last year fell between September 28-October 7.  The S&P 500 fell roughly 4.5% between September 28 and October 3rd.  By October 7th the market had rebounded about 5.25% for roughly a gain during the total time frame of about .5%, albeit with a lot of volatility.  Anybody buying the market on October 7th and holding through the end of the year would have experienced a gain of about 8.5%, again with a higher than normal amount of volatility.*

 Rosh Hashanah begins this year on September 16th at sundown.  Yom Kippur begins at Sundown on September 25th.  

*Historical price data courtesy of Morningstar.com.

**Long ETFs related to the S&P 500 in client and personal accounts.  Certain clients of our firm also own Apple Computer.