Summer portfolio – update 2023

I first wrote about the "sell in may" phenomenon in 2016  in my article "Should you sell in May and go away". The adage states that you "Sell in May and go away and don't come back till St. Leger Day", in other words, sell out of the stock market in May and stay in cash over the summer, before going back in at the start of September when the St Leger Stakes horse race is run. The theory is that by doing so you avoid the more volatile summer months which historically have also tended to underperform the rest of the year.

But just before the summer of 2021 I developed the concept of building a Summer portfolio, where rather than disinvesting into cash over the summer months you move into defensive assets. You can read this research in full in my article "Summer portfolio & Sell in May".