Market Performance on Last Day of Quarter

There's always lots of talk about window dressing at the end of the quarter, especially on the final trading day.  But at least during the current bull market, the S&P 500 has gone down on the final trading day of the quarter much more often than it has gone up.  As shown below, since the first quarter of 2009, the S&P has gone down on the last day of the quarter eight times and gone up just twice.  Both times the index has gone up, it has gone up more than 1% on the day.  On the 8 days that the index has gone down, the S&P has averaged a decline of 0.50%.  On the last day of the third quarter in 2009, the S&P fell 0.33%, and on the last day of the third quarter in 2010, the index fell 0.31%.

Subscribe to Bespoke Premium to receive more in-depth research from Bespoke.