Yale & Jeff Hirsch

About the Editor
Jeff is editor in chief of the Almanac Investor newsletter Stock Trader's Almanac, StockTradersAlmanac.com, and the Hirsch Organization. He makes frequent appearances on CNBC, CC, Fox, and Bloomberg. Yale Hirsch is founder of the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

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After looking at the Top 10 S&P 500 Starts on Wednesday stirred up questions about the DJIA and our annual forecast, duplicate analysis on the DJIA was needed. DJIA has also gotten off to a solid start in election year 2012, but is actually lagging the S&P 500 by slightly more than two full percentage points. As of yesterday’s close, the 16th trading day of February, the S&P has advanced 8.42% compared to the DJIA’s advance of 6.28%. With an extra 30 years of DJIA data to consider (since 1901), 2012 ranks as the 16th best annual DJIA New Year beginning.

The 15 better years were 1987, 1975, 1976, 1931, 1932, 1996, 1991, 1986, 1997, 1934, 1967, 1905, 1918, 1936, and 1951. These years have been averaged together to represent what transpired through yearend. If 2012 follows a similar path, the bulls can expect some additional upside from now until mid March before a mild pullback begins that last till late May/early June, and the year should finish solidly. Interestingly, the potential 6% upside indicated in the chart remaining from now to a March top would put the DJIA around 13,750 at that point, only slightly better than the 13,500 first half highs we forecast in the 2012 Annual Forecast back in December. 

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