For Stocks, September May Be the Cruelest Month
September is fewer than three weeks away. Feeling nervous? Maybe you should be.
For investors, the period between Labor Day and Halloween is proving an annual
fright show. And no one knows why.
It was, of course, in September last year that Lehman collapsed and everything
fell apart. But then it was also September-October 2002 that the last bear
market plunged to its lows.
The 1998 financial crisis? It began late August, and rolled on for two months.
The famous crash of 1987 came in October. But most people have forgotten that
the market actually started sliding downhill in late August.
That's almost exactly what happened in 1929 too. The big crash came in October,
but the market peaked just after Labor Day. Prices began falling through
September, then tumbled further still.
The worst month of the Depression? September, 1931, when the Dow fell about 30
percent.
It was also in September, 2000, that the bear market really got going.
The 9/11 crisis, of course, came in September. That was hardly caused by
investors. But what is forgotten is that the stock market was already looking
wobbly. In the two weeks before the terrorist attacks, the Standard & Poor's
500-stock index fell 7 percent.
The great panic of 1907? October. The great crash of 1873? September.
Yikes.
So is there really a September, or a Halloween, effect?
Since 1926, investors have lost nearly one percent on average during September,
according to market data tracked by finance professor Kenneth French at
Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. It's the only month with a negative average
return.. For each of the other 11 months, investors gained nearly one percent on
average.
Other research takes the idea of an autumn dip even further. Georgia Tech
doctoral student Hyung-Suk Choi studied the so-called "September effect" as part
of his recent Ph.D. thesis. He looked at data for 18 developed stock markets
around the world spanning up to 200 years, and found that in 15 of those
markets, September brought red ink for investors.
Fund manager Sven Bouman and finance professor Ben Jacobsen concluded that
investors in most world markets have historically fared poorly from May through
October each year. They made their money between November and April.
Hence the old British investors' saying, "sell in May and go away, don't come
back till St Leger Day." (But since St. Leger Day is in the middle of September,
even that date may be premature.)
Some of the September or Halloween effect is caused by a few really bad years.
But that's not the whole story. To reduce the influence of outliers I looked
instead at the median result since 1926 instead of the statistical mean. The
performance gap between September and the other months shrank from 2 percent to
1.4 percent. That's smaller, but it's still a difference. The median September
saw losses of just 0.07 percent. But the median month for the rest of the year
gained 1.37 percent.
As for the causes of a possible September effect, most are stumped.
"There haven't been any good academic stories to explain it," admits Michael
Cooper, finance professor at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of
Business. "One credible explanation is just luck."
It's been suggested that mutual funds drive down the market by selling their
losing stocks before their October 31 year end. Or that third quarter profit
warnings come in early September, raising fears about full-year results. Or that
these autumn crashes used to be related to the harvest, as Midwestern banks
withdrew capital from New York.
(Still another theory cites seasonal affective disorder. Investors simply get
more risk-averse, and more prone to sell, as the days get shorter. That's the
case argued by York University finance professor Mark Kamstra and others.
So what, if anything, should you do?
In practical terms, maybe not that much. For most people, even a performance
difference of one or two percentage points isn't going to cover the transaction
costs of selling before the end of August and re-entering the market a month
later. And stock market patterns aren't ironclad. The market may even jump in
September, as it did in 2006 and 2007.
Perhaps the best you can do is brace for turmoil.
(Sumber : Milis WTA_Billy Budiman).
detikcom - Jakarta, Di tengah kepercayaan yang mulai pulih, investor akan menghadapi kenangan buruk atas apa yang terjadi di bulan September setahun yang lalu. Semua yang terburuk dari krisis finansial terjadi pada bulan September.
Pada September 2009, pemerintah AS dibuat 'sibuk' oleh berbagai masalah finansial yang membelit raksasa-raksasa finansialnya. Kondisi tersebut mau tak mau ikut menyeret seluruh pasar finansial dunia. Tak satu pun negara yang luput, termasuk Indonesia.
Di bulan September, pemerintah AS memutuskan untuk menyelamatkan Fannie Mae dan Freddie Mac, yang menjadi progam bailout terbesar dalam sejarah AS selama ini. Kedua perusahaan pembiayaan rumah AS itu harus diselamatkan setelah hancurnya sektor perumahan AS.
Krisis berlanjut dan memuncak setelah Lehman Brothers dinyatakan bangkrut, sekaligus menjadikannya sebagai bank investasi besar pertama yang benar-benar mengalami kolaps sejak terjadinya krisis.
Ditambah American International Group (AIG), perusahaan asuransi terbesar di AS, juga diambang kebrangkutan sehingga The Fed memutuskan untuk memberikan bailout sebesar US$ 85 miliar.
Dampak krisis keuangan telah semakin berimbas ke sektor riil, seperti tercermin dari turunnya angka penjualan eceran dan meningkatnya pengangguran di AS dan berbagai negara Eropa.
Rentetan demi rentetan kejadian terus menghantui kondisi pasar finansial dunia. Dan stabilitas setidaknya baru mulai dirasakan memasuki tahun 2009. Bursa Wall Street yang sempat terjatuh ke titik terendah sejak Great Depression, secara perlahan mulai pulih.
Indeks Dow Jones bahkan menembus level tertingginya sepanjang 2009. Demikian pula Standard & Poor's 500 dan juga Nasdaq yang berhasil naik hingga 50% sejak titik terendahnya pada 9 Maret lalu. Meskipun jika dibandingkan titik tertinggi di tahun 2007, S&P 500 masih kurang 34%.
Kendati demikian, transaksi perdagangan di tahun 2009 masih sangat tipis. Investor belum lepas dari trauma kejatuhan pasar. Bahkan analis memperkirakan investor semakin khawatir tentang 'September Effect'.
"Kutukan bulan September, bulan paling lemah sepanjang tahun sepertinya akan membawa pasar ke aksi jual bahkan sebelum kita memasuki bulan tersebut," ujar Al Goldman, analis dari Wells Fargo Advisors seperti dikutip dari AFP.
Selain itu, lanjut dia, belum ada tanda-tanda yang jelas bahwa pasar secara total telah bekerja selama 5 bulan terakhir hingga mencapai rally sekitar 50%.
"Untungnya, ini hanya masalah jangka pendek. Hal yang lebih penting adalah membaiknya fundamental dan rasio valuasi yang masuk akal," tambahnya.
Sementara Andy Brooks, head of equity trading T Rowe Price mengatakan, ketangguhan pasar saat ini adalah sebuah pertanda yang baik.
"Periode konsolidasi dan berada di level saat ini mungkin merupakan sebuah bullish yang fair. Kita telah melihat sebuah rally yang tidak dapat dikendalikan dan kita harus mempersiapkan untuk sebuah pengurangan, namun suara dari pasar kini sudah membaik," ujarnya.
Beberapa pengamat pasar juga mengatakan bahwa 'arus balik' dari resesi bisa saja lebih kuat dari yang telah diantisipasi. Hal ini dapat membantu mendongkarak laba korporasi dan pasar saham.
"Di AS, semua tanda kecuali belanja konsumen mulai menunjukkan pemulihan yang kuat," ujar Christian Broda, ekonom dari Barclays Capital.
Sejumlah tanda perbaikan ekonomi dan pasar finansial juga telah ditunjukkan oleh berbagai negara di dunia. Meskipun harapan akan pemulihan ekonomi yang cepat memang masih jauh. Semua kini hanya berharap agar 'September Effect' setahun silam, tidak terjadi lagi pada September 2009 ini.
