Three Stocks To Hold Through Year End

Seasonality is a strong determinant of price movement. Here are three stocks that have demonstrated strong price performance from August through the end of December. One of them is agricultural company Arched Daniels Midland. From August 4th through December 31st, the shares price has risen 81.4% of the time. One year ago, the stock began a rally of almost 14% by yearend. By mid-January, the shares gave back half of that five-month gain. Five months of price gain were gone in only two weeks. If an investor had held the stock since 1980, the annual return was about 8% annually. Holding the stock only in the strong August-December period returned over 30% annually. The weak January to August interval resulted in a loss. Of the three stocks, Archer has the lowest PE ratio of 11.5.

The next strong performer is Automatic Data Processing
ADP
. The stock has risen almost 75% of the time from July 30th through December 30th. The expected return has been 9.8%, the same as that of Archer Daniels. The PE ratio of 32, twice that of Archer.

The last company is Procter and Gamble. This well known Dow stock has been strong more than 93% of the time from June 27th through December 28th. The expected return has been 11.4%. The PE of 27 is elevated but reasonable.