Explaining the Summer Swoon
“Sell in May and go away.”
–Investing maxim
Selling in May sure seems to have been good advice this year: the Dow is down about 700 points (almost 5%) from its Spring high.
The explanation? (or at least one of them): Wall Street’s “A” team departs for the Hampton’s in the Summer, leaving the reserves to mind the store, as it were.
Wall Street’s work habits — or anyone else’s — don’t especially concern me, but for these two caveats: 1) investment bankers’ rather lavish compensation increasingly seems to come at taxpayers’ and savers’ expense (who do you suppose pays for multiple bailouts, zero percent interest rates, etc., both directly and indirectly); and 2) one of the key reasons always used to justify exorbitant Wall Street pay — relative to, say, teachers’ — is their grinding work schedule.
Hmmm . . . I can think of lots of other professionals who put in long hours without making millions (or billions) AND have to work Summers.
