Thanksgiving is over and the end is nigh for leftover turkey sandwiches. But we can look forward to feasting on Halloween treats at the end of the month.
Norman Rothery: Portfolios for dividend and value investors
The spooky festival also plays a role in the market because it lends its name to the Halloween Indicator, which is the flip side of the old adage to sell in May and go away. That is, one should buy stocks when the witches are out.
I discussed the long history of the Halloween Indicator, and its success, in an article in August. It highlights the work of Professors Cherry Y. Zhang and Ben Jacobsen and their examination of the indicator in 114 stock markets with data going back to 1693 in Britain, 1792 in the United States, and 1915 in Canada.
Today I’m going to look at the recent returns of a Canadian Halloween portfolio that invests in stocks from November through April of each year and in bonds from May through October. The portfolio uses broad market indexes as proxies for stocks and bonds with stocks being represented by the S&P/TSX Composite Index and bonds by the S&P Canada Aggregate Bond Index.
The stock market index gained an average of 8.6 per cent annually from the end of January, 1993, through to the end of September, 2023, while the bond market index climbed by 4.8 per cent annually over the same period. The Halloween portfolio beat both with average gains of 10.1 per cent annually over the period. (The returns herein are based on month-end data from Bloomberg and include reinvested dividends and other distributions, but not fund fees or trading costs.)
You can examine the return history of the portfolio, and market indexes, in the accompanying graph.
The Halloween portfolio avoided the worst of the biggest stock market crashes by hiding out in bonds for half the year. As a result, it had a volatility (standard deviation) of 2.0 times that of the bond index since January, 1993. The stock index was about 2.8 times as volatile as the bond index over the same period.
The second graph highlights down periods for the portfolio and indexes. It shows how far each fell in bad times as a fraction of their prior highs.
The worst crashes for the stock index came in the financial crisis of 2008 when it gave up 43 per cent and the internet crash of 2000 when it also lost 43 per cent. The third worst bear market occurred during the Asian financial crisis when Canadian stocks fell 27 per cent in 1998.
In comparison, the Halloween portfolio fared better during the big crashes. The portfolio gave up 19 per cent in the 2008 downturn, 21 per cent in the 2000 tumble, and 6 per cent in 1998.
However, one of the portfolio’s biggest bungles occurred in the pandemic-related crash of 2020 when the stock index swooned 22 per cent by the end of March only to rebound quickly thereafter. The Halloween portfolio was stuck with the 22 per cent decline but failed to enjoy the subsequent summer rebound.
Bonds can also be risky and many investors were shocked when bond prices fell in 2022 as interest rates lurched up from generational lows. The bond index collapsed by 20 per cent last year and, in another case of bad timing, the Halloween portfolio gave up 13 per cent.
Inflation isn’t factored into the returns shown above and, as Thanksgiving bills can attest, rising prices can fuel nightmares for both shoppers and investors alike.
Investors who want to adopt the Halloween Indicator should think about using tax-advantaged accounts to mitigate the impact of regularly triggering capital gains taxes. Similarly, trading costs such as index fund fees and commissions should be minimized where possible.
While the Halloween portfolio isn’t for everyone, it has a long history of avoiding some of the scariest downturns to bring home a bag full of returns along the way.
Norman Rothery, PhD, CFA, is the founder of StingyInvestor.com.