A potential one-day trade could be beneficial leading up to Good Friday
Markets are closed at the end of the week to observe Good Friday, with Easter happening over the weekend. Now is a good time to see how stocks usually behave around the holiday. We will also look at what market performance leading up to Easter means for the rest of the year, and dig into the best and worst stocks to own the week after.
Days Surrounding Easter
For short-term traders who follow seasonal patterns, Easter gives a well-defined setup. Historically, Holy Thursday has been a bullish day for stocks. The S&P 500 Index (SPX) has been positive 73% of the time, with an average gain of 0.49%. For comparison, the typical day averages a return of 0.04%, with 54% of the returns positive.
That momentum, however, hasn’t carried through the weekend. The Monday after Easter has been weak, averaging a slight loss over the past 30 years, with fewer than half of the returns positive. Given this pattern, a potential one-day trade would be to buy near the market close on Wednesday and sell near the close on Thursday.
Easter and the Rest of the Year
Again, we see a very clear pattern over the past 30 years. The momentum generated from the beginning of the year until Easter has tended to continue throughout the rest of the year. With the SPX down about 7.5% so far in 2025, this is a bad sign.
The table below shows when the index has been down through Easter Sunday, it has averaged a slight loss for the rest of the year, with a median return of -4%. Only 40% of the returns were positive. Compare that to when the SPX has been up on the year through the holiday. In that case, it averaged a return of 11.4% for the rest of the year, with 90% of the returns positive.
Stocks the Week After Easter
Looking at SPX stocks over the past 10 years, the table below shows stocks that outperformed in the week following Easter. Some large cap tech companies tend to perform well next week, with Amazon.com (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META), Apple (AAPL), and Alphabet (GOOGL) all making the cut.
This next list of SPX stocks underperformed in the week after Easter. Energy companies are prominent, and two of the largest telecom companies, Verizon Communications (VZ) and AT&T (T), also made the list.
