Cycles

Under the category of “cycles”, SeasonalCharts provides seasonal trends over other timeframes as opposed to the standard one-year period. Among them are the 4-year election cycle, which shows the average trend over a four year period and the decade cycle, which uses a ten-year timeframe.

The four-year cycle is determined by the U.S. Presidential elections. The trend of important U.S. markets depends on whether the current year is an election year or non-election year (i.e. one, two or three years following an election year). Thus stocks tend in trend upwards more than average in the year prior to an election year as well as directly prior to the election itself. It is assumed that the reason for this behavior is national monetary policy. Increasing equity prices and a booming economy should help an incumbent government get reelected.

With the decade cycle, also referred to as the ten-year cycle, only a vague relation between calendar and price trend can be assumed. For that reason it is less substantiated.

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