December 2013 was, as December’s go, a good December. The Nifty clocked over 2% to end the year at +6.8%.
As we can see, the markets favour December, and we have had positive Decembers in 9 of the last 10 years. (And 16 of the last 20)
2013 ended reasonably for the Nifty, considering it was the year of the lowest GDP growth in 8 years, very high inflation, and the drop of the dollar of about 10%.
This is an election year. The last three election years (1999, 2004 and 2009) have seen reasonably positive results (+67%, 10%, +76%). Will we see a great time ahead too?
January tends to be extremely volatile – with average returns of -0.1% but a standard deviation of 8.5%. It’s not useful to predict direction based on months of the year anyhow, but this is great eye-candy. And with the increase of foreign investor participation, the calendar year becomes significant as new allocations (or de-allocations) happen for India as a country.
For the sake of completeness, here’s the Sensex:
What’s your thought on where January takes us?
