Stock Market News: Stocks Rally After PPI
Superstitious traders beware: Friday the 13th is tomorrow.
The stock market is on pace to enter the supposedly unlucky day looking to keep a strong week of gains on track. The market’s performance on Friday the 13th is reason to stay upbeat.
Going back to 1980, the S&P 500 has averaged a gain of 0.3% on Friday the 13th, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The Dow is up 0.2% on average, while the Nasdaq Composite is up 0.4%.
That compares to the S&P 500 and Dow’s average gain of 0.04% going back to 1980 and the Nasdaq’s average gain of 0.05%. The S&P moves 0.9% in either direction on average on Friday the 13th. That’s a pretty solid setup.
The market’s worst performance on the day during that span was the October 1989 Friday the 13th crash, when the S&P 500 fell 6.1% on news of a collapsed leveraged buyout of United Airlines.
One of the first major appearances of “Friday the 13th” in popular culture was Friday, the Thirteenth by Thomas William Lawson, which according to History.com tells the tale of a stockbroker who uses the date in a plot to bring down Wall Street.
But don’t be fooled. There isn’t much that’s scary about Friday the 13th for the stock market.