Why don’t you trade only four days a year? An empirical study into the abnormal returns of quarters first trading day

Abstract

In this research I examined a calendar anomaly that occurs at the beginning of each quarter. Through an examination of 34 years of daily and annual returns for the S&P500 and 13 years of returns for popular ETFs, I have demonstrated the existence of the First Day of Quarter (FDQ) effect. By trading only four days a year from the beginning of 2000 until the end of 2013, an investor could have gained 113.1% of the S&P500 returns for that period, while being exposed to stock risk for only 56 days. Moreover, for 11 of those 14 years of trading, the FDQ was responsible for more than 10% of the annual returns. Only for two years since 2000 (2001, 2005) has the FDQ yielded a negative return. The biggest beneficiary of the FDQ is the financial sector, which for the last 13 years of investing has been non-fertile, showing −6.12% total return. Investing only at the beginning of each quarter for a total of 52 days would have yielded a return of 40.17%. The next beneficiary of the FDQ is the technological sector. The 82.5% of total return gained in this sector over the last 13 years could have been gained in only 52 days of trading.