STRASMORE/EXPLORE 2,170 QUERIES

Growth of one dollar: holding all year vs holding only November through April

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 ranking 21×3read in context →
Growth of one dollar: holding all year vs holding only November through April — 21 rows by 3 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
yearbuy_and_hold_growthwinter_only_growth
20061.131.09
20071.281.17
20081.21.05
20090.760.94
20101.031.08
20111.181.24
20121.211.39
20131.381.57
20141.631.68
20151.81.74
20161.781.72
20172.061.93
20182.291.99
20192.542.16
20202.512.06
20213.612.64
20223.562.37
20233.592.55
20244.343.06
20254.792.98
20266.213.14
Rows × columns
21 × 3
Computed
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 Growth of one dollar: holding all year vs holding only November through April, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
year number 2,006 to 2,026
buy_and_hold_growth number 0.76 to 6.21
winter_only_growth number 0.94 to 3.14

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 , 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
),
pairs AS (
    SELECT toYear(apr_m.month_start) + 1 AS year,
           toFloat64(oct_m.month_close) / toFloat64(apr_m.month_close) AS summer_ratio,
           toFloat64(apr_next.month_close) / toFloat64(oct_m.month_close) AS winter_ratio
    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
)
SELECT year,
       round(exp(sum(log(summer_ratio * winter_ratio)) OVER (ORDER BY year)), 2) AS buy_and_hold_growth,
       round(exp(sum(log(winter_ratio)) OVER (ORDER BY year)), 2) AS winter_only_growth
FROM pairs
ORDER BY year

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