Recorded live on Feb. 20, 2026.
To access the webinar PDF with Q&A, click here.
Inside TradeSmith Exclusive- Trade Cycles Statistics Explained: Finding the Best and Worst Times to Trade
Slide 1: Introduction
Hi everyone, and welcome! I’m Marina Stroud, your Senior Product Education Specialist. Thanks for joining us today.
The Inside TradeSmith training webinars are designed to give you practical insights and hands-on guidance.
To further support your investment journey, we partnered with Senior Analyst Mike Burnick to bring you a quarterly Inside TradeSmith presentation. This series delivers expert commentary, actionable strategies, and timely perspectives on the latest investing tools and market trends within the TradeSmith ecosystem.
In these webinars, we’ll take the ideas and strategies from Inside TradeSmith articles and bring them to life. You’ll see live demonstrations of key features, learn how to apply these tools in real time, and get your questions answered directly during our interactive Q&A.
Slide 2: Today’s Topics
Today, we take a deep dive into Trade Cycles Statistics feature, designed to help you identify the best and worst days and months to trade your favorite tickers.
In this session, you’ll learn how to:
- Analyze historical performance to uncover seasonal trends Identify high-probability trading windows across individual stocks and major markets.
- Review detailed performance statistics for the S&P 500 and other key indices.
For the referenced Inside TradeSmith article, Jan. 22, 2026, click here.
You will also have an opportunity to pick Mike’s brain during our live Q&A session at the end of the event.
Before we dive in, a quick note:
Slide 3: Disclaimer
The information we’re sharing today is for educational purposes only. We are not financial advisers, so while we love talking about markets and tools, we can’t provide personalized advice or tell you what to buy, sell, or hold. Please think of us as your friendly TradeSmith tour guides.
Also, no need to scribble notes at lightning speed—we are recording today’s presentation. So if you miss something (or want to relive the magic), you’ll be able to watch the replay at your convenience.
Mike, the new Trade Cycles Statistics page shows you the facts on seasonal tendencies for stocks, indexes, ETFs commodities, and many other assets. I am excited to learn how you use this information.
[Mike]
That’s right, Marina. One of the most memorable phrases from vintage television history was Sergeant Joe Friday as Dragnet. He always insisted that “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”
At TradeSmith, our Trade Cycles work the same way. They show “just the facts” -- the hard data about seasonal trends in the past – that tend to consistently repeat over time.
Marina, let’s take a closer look.
Go to website.
[Marina]
Folks, feel free to follow along on your computer. To access your Trade Cycles Statistics page, you can search for a ticker on the upper right, or you can click on any security you track within a portfolio or basket.
Note: You must be subscribed to Trade Cycles or be a TradeSmith Platinum member to access the detailed seasonality stats).
Mike, what do you want to look up?
[Mike]
Let’s take a closer look at the seasonal stats for the S&P 500 (SPX).
The site will route you to the Asset Details page, where you can continue to review your ticker. Marina, let’s go to the Trade Cycles tab and click on Statistics.
[Marina]
Mike, I noticed the default “Years Under Review” is set to the last 15 years. While I understand that more years can provide a broader statistical sample, for an index like the S&P 500 (SPX), would you recommend using “All Years” instead, or is a 15-year window sufficient for reliable analysis?
[Mike]
15 years is usually sufficient, but 30 years can be better depending on your goal. For example, if you’re doing research or long-term investments, not short-term trading, 30 years may be the better way to go.
For the S&P 500 for instance, you can use our Trade Cycles tools to review seasonal data all the way back to 1950, and back to 1928 for the Dow.
For today’s lesson, 15 years on the S&P 500 (SPX) provides strong, actionable, modern statistics.
But you can modify this in several ways, as you can see. You can choose to review a specific year range or view them all in our database – and you can even select any of the four-year election cycle periods or presidential parties!
While we are on looking at the “Years Under Review,” you will notice we updated the settings.
In the middle, you will see the years under review. You can check or uncheck any years you don’t wish included. The current year’s data includes data up to yesterday’s close.
And at the bottom of the settings menu, you can opt for a custom date range and select a particular month. The Statistical data will adjust based on how you adjust your settings.
For example, let’s review the February and March performance statistics.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
[Marina]
Mike, I am not too impressed with the average returns for March.
[Mike]
March may be lower historically when we compare to other months, but August is actually our worst performing month, and we will talk more about this in just a bit.
[Marina]
Fantastic! So, I will remove February and March and open it up to all months of the year.
Let’s check out the best and worst performing days and months for the S&P 500 (SPX) going back 15 years' worth of price data.
[Mike]
At the top of the page, you’ll find detailed performance stats on the best (and worst) historical Days of the Week and Months for SPX returns.
According to this chart, Friday has been the best performing day of the week, while Tuesday is the worst. Meanwhile, the best month for SPX is November and August is the worst.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
[Marina]
Mike, do these statistics line up with your experience in the markets?
[Mike]
This does seem reasonable. Friday strength is often attributed to positioning ahead of weekends and options expiration dynamics. Tuesday weakness could be attributed to “Taco Tuesday” - just kidding. But Tuesday weakness has shown up in multiple long-term studies that analyze average daily returns across decades – though seasonal tendencies reflect historical probabilities, not predictions.
Going back further in the data, since 1950, Monday has been the worst-performing day, and Tuesday is close. Friday is consistently the best day over 15 years and longer term.
November strength aligns with the well-documented year-end seasonal rally, and August weakness reflects lower volume, vacation, and increased volatility.
Again, digging deeper in our Trade Cycles database, back to 1950, September is the worst month, and November remains the best.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026 (looking at “All” years).
When looking at “All Years,” February is also weak with historical average returns of about 0.19%. If you scroll down to “Day-of-Month" February shows the most downside in the second half of the month.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026 (looking at “All” years).
[Marina]
Mike, should we also be careful to trade any S&P 500 (SPX) stocks in August or September?
[Mike]
Not necessarily, Marina. August’s historical weakness doesn’t mean you should avoid trading S&P 500 stocks altogether, but you may want to be more selective and disciplined with risk management.
While August and September do have a well-deserved bad reputation over time, there have still been plenty of market gains during that time frame, including last year with the S&P 500 up about 7% over those 2 months.
[Marina]
Got it. I will switch back to the last 15 years and let’s check out this Yearly Matrix graph in more detail.
[Mike]
Sounds good, Marina.
The Yearly Matrix pinpoints winning and losing streaks over the past 15 years. Near the top of the page, the monthly and yearly stats are neatly summarized.
For instance, November is the best month to invest in SPX, with stocks up over 86% of the time, while posting median returns of 2.47% (average returns = 3.03%) historically.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026 (looking at last 15 years).
Marina, if you scroll down the page, you’ll see detailed performance stats for SPX month-by-month.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
This includes just the facts on performance historically, including the Accuracy Rate, Average Return, Median Return, and Annualized Returns for the SPX each month over the last 15 years.
You can click in the Pattern drop-down menu to select the month – that you want to view seasonal performance stats for.
[Marina]
Mike, I can also click on the respective month to adjust my statistics. For example, as we discovered, November is historically the best performing month.
[Mike]
That’s right. And take a look at August. August is barely sticking its head out with about 0.34% average returns. Ouch.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026 (looking at the last 15 years).
Marina, let’s scroll down to the Week-of-month window. Here you can see that week four for all months has historically been the most rewarding time to own SPX, up over 60% of the time with median returns of +0.4% (average = +0.5%). That’s an annualized return of +20%!
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
[Marina]
Mike, why are we showing “Week 5?” I thought we only had four weeks in a month.
[Mike]
That is a good question, Marina. Typically, there are only four weeks in a month, but if you look at the calendar for January, there are actually five weeks.
[Marina]
So, January is the only month that says, “Welcome back from the holidays...and here’s an extra work week.”
[Mike]
Marina, think of the fifth week as easing us back into the market.
Now, let’s scroll to the bottom to view the Days-of-month view.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
Here you can find even more fine-grained details, including the best (and worst) Day-of-month and even the Day-of-week performance stats.
And don’t forget, you can access the same detailed seasonal stats and historical data for many other assets, including individual stocks.
Marina, let’s take a look at Apple (AAPL).
[Marina]
Sounds good. I will search for it in the “Search for Ticker” field on the upper right of the site.
[Mike]
The best performing day of the month of Monday and the worst performing day is Thursday.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
[Marina]
I see that the best performing month is October, but if you look at the Yearly Matrix, September has about –2% average returns, where October historically has 3.83%. Mike, why is there such a big contrast in the returns from one month to the next?
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
[Mike]
I think a lot of it has to do with market seasonality, while October is the best month for the S&P, stocks are often down in the Aug-Sept timeframe, as we saw earlier. So that would account for some of Apple’s bad performance in Sept.
As far as October being best, there’s a unique company-specific reason at work here.
Apple typically releases its flagship products on a predictable annual schedule, with major iPhone and Apple Watch launches in September and October. So, that could contribute to some weakness ahead of the new product launch, and then excitement afterward, which falls into October.
[Marina]
Fantastic! Mike, I think we are ready to pick your brain now.
Slide 4: Live Q&A with Mike
Disclaimer:
The responses provided during this live Q&A session are unscripted and may contain grammatical errors or minor inaccuracies. Our focus is on delivering real-time insights and valuable information, and we appreciate your understanding as we prioritize engagement over polished delivery.
William: What does best performing mean?
Mike: Yeah, well, that tends to be the best performing day of the week for this particular security. So in other words, it has a higher win rate or accuracy rate, as we call it here, and that it generally has consistently positive median and average returns.
Katrina: What about the time of day?
Mike: We have our software engineers haven't drilled down to the time of the day, but we could maybe put that in a suggestion box where we can get five or ten minute segments of data to really day trade all day.But. Yeah. I mean, the rhythm of the normal day. You know, what I learned when I first got in this business almost forty years ago, is the. The dumb money trades in the first half hour, and the smart money trades in the last half hour. And nobody trades around lunchtime. You know, they all go out to Carnegie Delli there in Manhattan and from Wall Street and get a sandwich.
Emil: Why are there some highlighting around some of the boxes?
Mike: Well the shadings basically if it's dark you know, darker like a red shading, that's bad. You because here we're looking at Microsoft now for April, 2024 down 8% and again in July, which is again, that's unusual, isn't it?
But Microsoft happened to be down 8% in 2024 in the month of July. So it just shows you whether there's a kind of a string of red in a row. Multiple months or multiple years can kind of show you that's a week period.
Meanwhile, the ones that are highlighted green with little the box around it. Like 8.8% in May of 2025 is one of the better months.
Erick: Can you explain what the annualized return means?
Mike: Okay, so that would be the annualized gain that you would earn if you just invested in Microsoft only in the month of January in each of the last fifteen years, right? So basically it's a compounded return.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
So if you read it from left to right, just to kind of put it all together, you see the accuracy rate what I like to call it win rate is 73%, so that means it's up in the month of January. Microsoft is up three or four times roughly. The average returns about two and a half percent. Median's a little bit better than that. About 3.3%. And if you invested only in the month of January in Microsoft for each of the last 15 years, then 30.7% is what you should achieve in total gains. Just compounding that money only in Microsoft and only in that time period that seasonal window of January.
Leslie: Is there a way for us to screen for the highest accuracy rates?
Mike: You can screen for the actual historical pattern accuracy rate, which again, I like to call the win rate.
Here’s a simple stock screener you can run with the Trade Cycles filters:
Image taken from a Platinum account on Feb. 20, 2026.
- Markets: S&P 500
- Seasonality Pattern Accuracy Rate: 75% or greater
- Seasonality Pattern Average Return: 5% or greater
- Days to Seasonality Pattern Start Date: Less than 40 days.
Roy: How would you apply this system to asset categories?
Mike: For instance, we could put ticker GLD, which is the ETF that tracks gold in there.
Or any, you know, index tracking ETF it could be a commodity index tracker. It could be a sector like technology or semiconductors, health care, what, you know, you name it, we've got the seasonal data for it. So with GLDD, we see that the best performing day of the week happens to be Friday. Again, this is the last 15 years and the worst is Thursday. So that means you wanted to buy it yesterday at the close.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
And the best month is January and the worst performing month is September, which is not a surprise because what is the worst performing month for stocks is September.
And so, you know, there's a lot of panic sell offs that have happened in the month of September, which means people sell everything, even gold, apparently.
Micheal: What strategy do you recommend finding the best yields? Yields if the market turns bearish.
Mike: One way to do it is by looking at the you know, we've been focusing on the statistics tab, but the tried and true method with seasonality is just to look at the trade cycle seasonality chart itself.And that comes, as you know, in two flavors. The annual pattern shows, you know, where gold is likely to go over the next year. And you can see here, it looks like it's got a little bit of a sawtooth pattern coming up over the next several months, followed by an up trend that starts.
Images as of Feb. 20, 2026.
Armando: How does the Statistics tab work when a company has less than 15 years of trading data?
Mike: We're looking at Palantir (PLTR) and that only has seven years. So, you know, with seven years, data, you have to take it with a grain of salt.
I mean, that's not a really long period of time. So you know, you take it for what it's worth, it does have definite seasonal tendencies just over the last seven years. But I would say, you know, you probably have a little bit of a lower conviction of that repeating compared to, let's say, Microsoft, where you can look up 30 or 40 years of data. Right?
Steven: The presentation so far is focused on the best time to trade for a given stock. I would much rather hear about how to identify which stocks are best performing.
Mike: You can do it in the Markets tab by looking at the top performers (Performance Leaders). Obviously that could be a topic for a whole other webinar.
Image as of Feb. 20, 2026.
Yeah, this is a relatively new enhancement. I think this came out a couple of releases ago. Excuse me, but the performance leaders can you can look at individual stocks over different time frames or you can look at the ETFs and you know, the a lot of times will track a particular industry group, you know, like software for example, which is how to favor now or semiconductors, which are in favor or health care or energy or what have you.
So over the last, let's say one month, you can look at all the ETF advancers, decliners or whether they're making new hives or new lows and it'll show you the period percentage change. So this is over the last one month.
And you could see the change for XES, which is an energy oil field services specifically as the ETF is up almost 22% just in the last month alone.
Terry: Can you talk more about the accuracy rate and how that impacts your decision to buy or sell during a good month? For example, 100% is high confidence; 50% is a crapshoot.
Mike: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a good way to look at it. Around fifty percent is sort of a crapshoot. The market, historically, over the long goes up about two thirds of the time, right? A little less than that.
I think it's sixty some percent of the time. So, you know, you want to look at, you know, perhaps a, you know, win rate for a particular stock or for the market. Well, for the market, that's the market in general, but for a particular stock, you want something probably better than sixty percent.
When we ran that screener just a while ago. We look for 75% accuracy rate or above.
Sharda: When a cycle is green, is that the best time to buy? What if we miss the start date?
Mike: [Yes, you would look at buying when you see a green seasonality pattern. If you missed the pattern, look ahead for the next pattern]. And so for stock, you can type in the ticker symbol and just look at the chart that we showed above to just see visually where the patterns are, you know, the seasonal windows are.
Slide 5: Contact Us
Thanks again for joining us today! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our dedicated customer success team.
Mike, thanks for sharing your insights and expertise.
[Mike provides his closing remarks]