Editor's note: Markets don't move at random. They move on a calendar. In this issue, Keith Kaplan, CEO of our corporate affiliate TradeSmith, shows how seasonality creates repeatable windows of opportunity – and why getting the timing right matters more to your wealth than any other factor...
Also, the markets and our offices will be closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So keep an eye out for your next issue of DailyWealth on Tuesday after the Weekend Edition.
If you're like most people, you probably made a New Year's resolution recently.
Maybe it's to save more money, cut down on calories, or spend more time in the gym. But here's an uncomfortable truth...
Sticking to that resolution has less to do with discipline – and more to do with timing.
You see, most people don't abandon good intentions at random. They do it on a schedule.
Wharton professor Katy Milkman first noticed this in the early 2010s. She wasn't interested in motivational speeches or willpower. She focused on something more precise: Not why people decide to change, but when.
What she found was remarkably consistent. Decisions to diet, exercise, save, or invest didn't spread evenly throughout the year. They clustered around a handful of dates – Mondays, the first of the month, birthdays... and most of all, January 1.
To test the pattern, Milkman and her colleagues looked at gym check-ins, Google searches, and self-improvement course enrollments.
Right after these "fresh start" dates, effort surged. Then, just as reliably, it faded.
The lesson wasn't that people lack willpower. It was that human behavior runs on a calendar. Motivation rises and falls on a schedule, whether we notice it or not.
And if millions of people shift their investing behavior at the same time, the same can happen in the markets.
After all, markets are just the sum of investors' decisions...
Traders Have Always Tracked Cycles
Seasonality isn't some new invention. It has shaped markets for a long time.
Commodity traders have always tracked planting and harvest cycles. Energy markets move with heating and cooling demand. Gold rises and falls with annual jewelry buying patterns in India and China.
Stock investors have noticed calendar effects, too... the "January effect" and quarter-end rebalancing, for example. Even the old saying "sell in May and go away" is a seasonal observation.
These days, though, we can measure seasonality much more precisely – across individual stocks, over decades of data, and down to specific days.
Consider big-box retailer Target (TGT)...
Despite years of volatility, one pattern remains consistent. Between June 22 and July 21, Target's stock has risen an average of 5.2%. And it has rallied in this window each of the past 15 years. Take a look...
That pattern held true in 2025, when the stock gained 10.3% during its seasonal window.
Home-improvement retailer Home Depot (HD) shows a similar rhythm...
Between June 15 and July 27, the stock has risen 93% of the time over the past 15 years. Its average gain is 4.7% during that period.
In 2025, it followed the same script, rising 6.7% in a little more than a month...
These aren't one-off coincidences. They're patterns that only become visible when you analyze markets by timing, not narratives.
Circle These Dates on Your Calendar
In 2024, my team and I at TradeSmith set out to find more of these windows.
With thousands of lines of computer code and quintillions of data points, we were confident we'd find some patterns. But what we discovered surprised even us...
Thousands of stocks showed they rise and fall during specific times of year. We call these windows "green days."
So we built a trading system designed to act on these unique periods. We pinpointed bullish seasonal windows across roughly 5,000 stocks, down to the day.
In back tests, our Seasonality tool succeeded 83% of the time. And over an 18-year back test, seasonal trades generated 857% total growth – more than double the S&P 500's return over the same period.
Even in 2007 – the weakest year in the test – the strategy produced a positive return, more than doubling the S&P 500.
That's why we've just unlocked a version of our Seasonality software. You can explore the seasonal "green days" for thousands of stocks yourself.
And next Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern time, we're hosting our Prediction 2026 event...
We'll cover all the seasonal patterns you need to be aware of as we kick off the year. And I'll also walk you through how we uncovered these patterns... why they persist even in chaotic markets... and how you can use them to inform your trading decisions.
Knowing when these windows are open and closed likely matters more to your wealth than any single resolution you made this year.
Good investing,
Keith Kaplan
Editor's note: Next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern time, TradeSmith will unveil the latest innovations in its biggest breakthrough in 21 years. Built for today's AI-driven market, this system can spot which of 5,000 stocks is most likely to surge. And Keith says the first date you'll want to circle is January 28. If seasonality patterns hold, it could open one of the most lucrative trading windows in decades.
Further Reading
"A market with only a few big stocks driving the rally is a house of cards," Brett Eversole writes. But today, more than half the market is in an uptrend. That healthy number shows the bears are too early... and that the market is as healthy as ever.
Last year, shares of electric-vehicle maker Tesla rose double digits. But the stock's gains are no longer strictly tied to its car sales. CEO Elon Musk's celebrity has become increasingly tied to the stock's performance. And for a stock prone to big daily swings, it's important to separate narrative from business health.
