The January Barometer is one of Wall Street’s favorite seasonal gauges. According to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, it has registered only nine major errors since 1950 and been accurate 74.6 percent of the time. If relatively flat years are excluded, the accuracy rate gets even better: 86.6 percent.
But in a year when a lot of old saws are not working, this may not be accurate in 2018: January saw a gain of 5.6 percent, but the S&P 500 is down 7 percent so far.
