Every year, for as long as we can remember, we have written a weekly or a monthly note with some variation of the ‘Sell in May’ trope, so we see no reason to break the habit this year.
The chart (courtesy of Nick Glydon and team at Redburn Atlantic) shows the steady uptrend in searches for the expression every April over the last 14 years and while obviously there is a ‘usage factor’, it is certainly on a lot of traders’ minds at the moment.
The historic rationale for the expression comes from the leveraged trading end of the spectrum and tended to reflect the fall in speculative activity in the commodities markets over the summer months and while the speculators have moved heavily into other markets since those days, the seasonal drop off in activity as the head traders head to the beach remains a factor - the juniors tend to flatten the books and keep things ticking over.
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