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?.
| year | buy_and_hold_growth | winter_only_growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 1.13 | 1.09 |
| 2007 | 1.28 | 1.17 |
| 2008 | 1.2 | 1.05 |
| 2009 | 0.76 | 0.94 |
| 2010 | 1.03 | 1.08 |
| 2011 | 1.18 | 1.24 |
| 2012 | 1.21 | 1.39 |
| 2013 | 1.38 | 1.57 |
| 2014 | 1.63 | 1.68 |
| 2015 | 1.8 | 1.74 |
| 2016 | 1.78 | 1.72 |
| 2017 | 2.06 | 1.93 |
| 2018 | 2.29 | 1.99 |
| 2019 | 2.54 | 2.16 |
| 2020 | 2.51 | 2.06 |
| 2021 | 3.61 | 2.64 |
| 2022 | 3.56 | 2.37 |
| 2023 | 3.59 | 2.55 |
| 2024 | 4.34 | 3.06 |
| 2025 | 4.79 | 2.98 |
| 2026 | 6.21 | 3.14 |
- Rows × columns
- 21 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
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.
Run it yourself
This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.
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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