Theory
The four-year U.S. presidential cycle is attributed to politics and its impact on America's economic policies and market sentiment. Either or both of these factors could be the cause for the stock market's statistically improved performance during most of the third and fourth years of a president's four-year term.
The month-end seasonality cycle is attributed to the automatic purchases associated with retirement accounts.
The secular stock market cycles that last about 30 years move in lockstep with corresponding secular economic, social, and political cycles in the US.
Read more about this topic: Stock Market Cycles
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“Psychotherapy—The theory that the patient will probably get well anyway, and is certainly a damned ijjit.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.”
—Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)