Been curious about something -- does the stock market actually do better during Thanksgiving week, or is that just a coincidence? So I pulled up data from the past decade and turns out there's actually a pattern here.

The S&P 500 has historically outperformed during Thanksgiving week relative to its full-year gains in 7 out of 10 years. When the stock market closed on Thanksgiving and that Friday (Black Friday close at 1pm), investors seemed to catch a bit of a rally more often than not. Out of those 10 years, it only underperformed twice and matched expectations once.

Looking at specific years -- 2024 saw the S&P 500 up 23.3% for the year, and that Thanksgiving week performed better than you'd expect from dividing annual returns by 52 weeks. Same story in 2023 (24.2% annual gain), 2019 (28.9%), 2017 (19.4%), and 2016 (9.5%). Even in rough years like 2022 when the market dropped 19.4%, that Thanksgiving week still held up better than the math would suggest.

2021 was the exception -- strong year overall (26.9% gain) but that Thanksgiving week was rough, which turned out to be a warning sign for the chaos coming in 2022. And 2018 was similar, with a bad Thanksgiving week foreshadowing the December selloff.

So yeah, the stock market closed for the holiday but historically that week tends to be a bright spot. Not saying time the market or anything, just an interesting pattern over the last 10 years.