This chart shows that buying and holding stocks beats ‘sell in May and go away’ and other gimmicks

The "sell in May and go away" adage holds that investors should exit equities at the start of May and return in the fall, based on the historical tendency for stocks to underperform during the warmer months. This year, followers of that strategy have missed a rally, according to the source material — a reminder that seasonal patterns are tendencies, not guarantees.

For investors, the episode illustrates a broader point about market timing. Seasonal rules are backward-looking: they describe what has often happened, not what must happen next. Any given year can defy the pattern, and the cost of being out of the market during an unexpected advance can be significant.

What to watch: whether the rally persists through the historically weaker stretch, and how widely the "sell in May" approach is discussed in the months ahead. The takeaway is less about dismissing seasonal data than about treating it as one input among many — and recognizing the difficulty of consistently acting on it.