The importance of January for the equity markets

On wall street there are many axioms. One of them is that as goes January so goes the year and as goes the first week of Jan so goes January. So thats like saying as goes the first week so goes the rest of the year, right?
So January is very important , not only due to the Axiom but due to many factors. Earnings ( or the lack of earnings ) season starts and this time around its very very crucial to see where companies stand.
Also remember I wrote about the Santa Rally, the Santa rally goes into the first 2 days on Jan ( if you believe in it at all). So the first week has a tendency to be good but not always.
I will be putting up many Polls like there is one for SP500 and Gold already on the blog and then I will put up some more, like Oil etc. If you get a chance vote so we know where most people stand. Sentiment is a very important part of wall street analysis. I believe in contrarian indicators, like the put/call etc.
The purpose is to find out if people are bullish or bearish and when the readings reach an extreme, thats the place where we get some turning points in the markets.
I will have a short write up about the Put/call indicator soon.
You can get updates about the put/call (p/c) numbers on cboe.com or click here.
Also there is a Call/put indicator , the numbers are maintained by the ISE, this is the exact oppsite of the p/c ratio. Click here for that. Its a good idea to see both numbers everyday so if both show an extreme you know somethings up.
Example, if markets are going up and the p/c is very low and C/P is very high, then you know we will have a pullback in the markets etc.
There are other sentiment indicators too , I will cover them later.