If you suffer from that, it means you are afraid of Friday the 13th.
According to popular belief (and this article), Friday the 13th really can be unlucky. For as long as I can remember, Friday the 13th has been considered an unlucky day – but why? Is it actually cursed by some higher power or are the misfortunes of our typical day-to-day life just more pronounced because we’re expecting it? For instance, did my computer freeze 3 times yesterday because it was Friday the 13th or because I shouldn’t have 17 applications open at once? It’s probably the latter…
Despite our superstitions – or not - here are 3 ways that this article suggests Friday the 13th is unlucky:
It’s bad for business - superstitious people may avoid flying, keep of busy roads or just stay at home altogether; the estimated loss of business costs the U.S. economy almost $1 million. It’s worth mentioning the successful and uneventful landing of the Finnair flight 666, 13 year old plane which took off at 13:00 yesterday (Friday the 13th ) destined for HEL (Finland’s Helsinki Airport).
Traffic accidents go up - the day has been linked to a rise in the number of traffic accidents. A 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal recommended people stay home, finding that the risk of being hospitalized after a traffic accident increased 52% on Friday the 13th. The results were echoed again in a 2000 study.
Stock markets go down - A “Friday the 13th effect” on the stock market was suggested by economists Robert Kolb and Ricardo Rodriguez in 1987, who found that returns were significantly lower on Friday 13th than on other Fridays. Two years later, Kolb and Rodriguez’s theory seemed to hold true when the stock market suffered a mini crash on October 13, 1989. But subsequent research disputes the association – and so did the market yesterday, reversing Thursday’s slight weakness and the S&PTSX closing up 79.12 pts and the S&P500 up 4.20 pts.
Looking ahead at next week’s inauguration and other headline events, there are certainly are a lot of things to think about and ‘worry’ about in the news, and with that, a seemingly endless number of opinions about what to do about it.
In reality, long-term changes take a long time to develop, and rarely is there any urgency to change a long-term investment plan. And so in this world full of noise and confusion, we believe it’s important to understand that the longer-term trend of the stock market is positive and bullish, which implies that any near-term volatility that shows up could be buying opportunities. The indexes now stand near the mid-point of their longer-term trends, which gives them room to move in either direction over the near term, but in our view continue to suggest further gains over the next year.
With so much going on and information coming at us from every angle, it's sometimes hard to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening. In an effort to keep you in-the-know and provide you with some conversation nuggets for the weekend, I've compiled the following hit list to fill your conversation pipeline.
Now you are in-the-know with Word on the Street.
Enjoy the weekend.
D.
Dian Chaaban
Investment & Wealth Advisor
Chaaban Wealth Management Group
416.842.4234