The Wall Street adage “Sell Rosh Hashanah, Buy Yom Kippur” suggests that traders can profit by shorting the S&P 500 at the start of Rosh Hashanah (Monday, September 22, 2025) and covering to go long on Yom Kippur (Wednesday, October 1, 2025), capitalizing on a historical tendency for market declines during this period. And statistics bear this out.
vs. "Buy Rosh Hashanah at the low of the day, and cover on Yom Kippur at the high."
The
table above examines the performance of the S&P 500 from 1970 to 2024,
analyzing extreme prices ("Sell Rosh Hashanah at the day's high and cover at Yom
Kippur's low" vs. "Buy at Rosh Hashanah at the day's low and cover at Yom
Kippur's high") and calculates percentage returns for each year, averages, medians, and counts positive/negative years to evaluate the profitability of each strategy:
Sell Rosh Hashanah, Buy Yom Kippur: Average profit 2.31% (median 2.10%), positive in 51/55 years (92.73%).
Buy Rosh Hashanah, Sell Yom Kippur: Average loss 1.42% (median 0.79%), negative in 41/55 years (74.55%).
Buy Rosh Hashanah, Sell Yom Kippur: Average loss 1.42% (median 0.79%), negative in 41/55 years (74.55%).
However, will this year be different, and, contrary to negative seasonality, ‘Buy Rosh Hashanah, Sell Yom Kippur’ be the better option?
Statistically, clearly not—but Hurst cycles analysis suggests otherwise: The 20-week, 80-day, and 40-day cycles bottomed on Monday, September 1, and are pushing higher into early October. The S&P 500 may have already peaked today or could top around tomorrow’s FOMC press conference, before declining into a 20-day cycle trough later this week (New Moon/Fall Equinox) or early next week, and then resuming the uptrend into the major 40-week cycle top around October 6 (±2-3 days)(see also David Hickson’s Bitcoin cycle analysis).
See also: