It’s the most wonderful time of year for those heavily weighted in the stock index ETFs… At least if you’re a believer of the famous “Santa Claus Rally,” which simply means that in the past, December has been historically kind to stock market returns. You know how we feel about past performance… it is not indicative to future results.

But we can’t deny if said past performance has been good for stocks. We talked about the Santa Claus Rally last year, and there is a lot of debate of whether the Santa Claus rally is a myth, or if there is some basis in fact.

Here’s this year’s observation from Stock Trader’s Almanac:

“According to the 2015 Stock Trader’s Almanac, since 1969 the Santa Claus rally has yielded positive returns in 34 of the past 44 holiday seasons—the last five trading days of the year and the first two trading days after New Year’s. The average cumulative return over these days is 1.6%, and returns are positive in each of the nine days of the rally, on average. Nevertheless, each year there is at least one day of declines.

Alternative research over a longer period confirms the persistence of these trends: According to historical data going back to 1896, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained an average of 1.7% during this seven-day trading period, rising 77% of the time.”

No one can really pinpoint the cause of such a rally, but this year’s run can be attributed to better than expected economic growth, via NBC news:

“The wind in the stock market’s sails lately has been the pledge by the Federal Reserve last week to be cautious about raising borrowing costs amid signs that the economy is picking up steam. Investors got another signal of the economy’s emerging strength on Tuesday when the government revised upward its final estimate of third quarter economic growth to the fastest pace in 11 years — 5.0 percent from 3.9 percent reported last month.”

Just today, stocks reached new all time highs off of this news but it hasn’t been slow small gains. Just days ago (5 trading days), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down -4.3% on the month, and is now past 18,000. By our estimation, historically, there’s only been a 17% chance that the index finishes the month positive after a down move like that, let alone only 5 days {past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results).

But it hasn’t just been this rebound, or the last rebound. It’s that it only took the DJIA six months to go from 17,000 to 18,000. Before that, it only took seven months to go from 16,000 to 17,000 {past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results}. Will it take six months to reach 19,000? A year from now, will it be at 20,000? We’ll let others do the speculating.  Enjoy the ride while it lasts, and happy holidays.

P.S – Stocks aren’t the only thing at new all time highs. Managed Futures hit new all time highs in November {Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results}.