S&P 500 tracker: May to October vs November to April, season by season

Name: S&P 500 tracker: May to October vs November to April, season by season
Creator: Strasmore
Published: 2026-08-03
License: https://www.strasmore.com/terms/

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-08-03, from Does Sell in May and Go Away Work?.

as of 2026-08-03 ranking 21×3read in context →

S&P 500 tracker: May to October vs November to April, season by season — 21 rows by 3 columns, computed 2026-08-03 from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
year	may_oct_pct	nov_apr_pct
2005	4.32	8.65
2006	5.06	7.58
2007	4.43	-10.56
2008	-29.81	-10.03
2009	18.54	14.66
2010	-0.29	15.19
2011	-8.13	11.53
2012	1.02	13.06
2013	10.03	7.21
2014	7.04	3.37
2015	-0.29	-0.73
2016	3	12.04
2017	7.98	2.85
2018	2.36	8.6
2019	3.16	-4.24
2020	12.45	27.8
2021	10.05	-10.27
2022	-6.27	7.7
2023	0.55	20.04
2024	13.25	-2.5
2025	23.03	5.34

Rows × columns: 21 × 3
Computed: 2026-08-03
Completeness: No missing values
Source: US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence: Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats: JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for S&P 500 tracker: May to October vs November to April, season by season, derived from the stored result.
Column	Type	Range	Notes
`year`	number	2,005 to 2,025
`may_oct_pct`	number	-29.81 to 23.03	percent
`nov_apr_pct`	number	-10.56 to 27.8	percent

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on 2026-08-03, and the query below is what returned them.

the exact SQL behind every number

WITH monthly AS (
    SELECT toStartOfMonth(toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) AS month_start,
           argMax(close, window_start) AS month_close
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
      AND toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) >= toDate('2005-04-01')
      AND toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) <= toDate('2026-04-30')
      AND (toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
           + toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) BETWEEN 570 AND 959
    GROUP BY month_start
)
SELECT toYear(apr_m.month_start) AS year,
       round(100 * (toFloat64(oct_m.month_close) / toFloat64(apr_m.month_close) - 1), 2) AS may_oct_pct,
       round(100 * (toFloat64(apr_next.month_close) / toFloat64(oct_m.month_close) - 1), 2) AS nov_apr_pct
FROM monthly AS apr_m
INNER JOIN monthly AS oct_m ON oct_m.month_start = addMonths(apr_m.month_start, 6)
INNER JOIN monthly AS apr_next ON apr_next.month_start = addMonths(apr_m.month_start, 12)
WHERE toMonth(apr_m.month_start) = 4
ORDER BY year

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