St.Patricks Day – Green Day For Stocks? (Backtest)
Last Updated on March 16, 2023
St. Patrick’s Day is an important day for Catholics. Is the day just as green for stocks as for those celebrating?
St. Patrick’s Day is one of the best days of the year for stocks, but that is thanks to the performance over the last 30 years.
Let’s find out why we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and how stocks have performed on that particular day (we backtest):
What is St. Patricks Day?
St. Patrick’s Day originated as a religious holiday in the 17th century to commemorate the death of Saint Patrick, who was said to have brought Christianity to Ireland. Over time, it became a celebration of Irish culture and heritage and is now a popular holiday around the world, especially in the United States.
The day is celebrated with parades, parties, wearing green, and drinking beer or Irish whiskey. The color green is associated with St. Patrick’s Day because it is the color of the shamrock, which is said to have been used by St. Patrick to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to the Irish people.
In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday and is celebrated with parades and other festivities. However, it is a more low-key affair than it is in the United States, where it is often associated with drinking and partying.
Overall, St. Patrick’s Day is a day to celebrate Irish culture, heritage, and the legacy of Saint Patrick, who played an important role in Irish history and religion.
St. Patrick’s Day trading rules
We make the following trading rules to backtest St. Patrick’s Day:
- If today is March and the calendar day is 16, we buy at the close.
- We sell at the close of the following trading day (the 17th).
If St. Patrick’s Day is on a non-trading day, we buy at the close of the nearest trading day and exit on the 17th or the next trading day.
St. Patrick’s Day backtest
Let’s apply the trading rules above to backtest S&P 500. We use the cash index back to 1960, and we get the following equity curve:
The 63 trades returned on average 0.28% per trade, and the win rate was 58%.
If we only trade when St. Patrick’s Day is a trading day, we get the following equity curve:
The average gain per trade increases to 0.42%.
List of trading strategies
We have written over 1200 articles on this blog since we started in 2012. Many articles contain specific trading rules that can be backtested for profitability and performance metrics.
The trading rules are compiled into a package where you can purchase all of them (recommended) or just a few of your choice. We have hundreds of trading ideas in the compilation. The code for St. Patrick’s Day is included.
The strategies are taken from our landing page, which contains different types of trading strategies.
The strategies also come with logic in plain English (plain English is for Python trading and backtesting).
For a list of the strategies we have made, please click on the green banner:
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