“Turnaround Tuesdays” are a thing — and we’re seeing one right now
Should you buy stocks the day after a big drop? The answer, in general, is maybe.
But statistically speaking, the odds are in tilted in your favor being long the stock market if that bad day happened to be a Monday.
The SPDR S&P 500 Trust (which tracks the benchmark US stock index) has tended to rise 1.2% on Tuesday following drops of at least 2% on Monday, according to Bespoke Investment Group. (SPY was up about 1.3% today as of the writing of this post.)
“There’s a reason the term ‘Turnaround Tuesday’ exists,” they write.
Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, fine-tuned the parameters behind a Tuesday bounce and came up with similar results. When the S&P 500 has fallen on a Thursday, Friday, and then by at least 2% on the ending Monday, those Tuesday returns have averaged 1.6% (and been positive 21 of 31 times).
“This pattern works so well that long stocks on Tuesday in 2008 made money even as the S&P 500 dropped more than 50% that year,” he added.