The best strategy for trading the Thanksgiving week, according to Mr. Hirsch of Stock Trader’s Almanac is:

getting long the week before Thanksgiving into some weakness and selling into any rally on Wednesday, and probably getting out mostly on Friday.

The chart below was copied from Stock Trader’s Almanac blog (the original post is here). Looks to me:

  1. Monday is weak and it’s getting better and better till the Friday.
  2. Wednesday is the most bullish day, Dow up 8 out of 9 since 2002.
  3. Friday was as good as the Wednesday but no so good recently since 2006.

Thanksgiving

So the strategy is to buy on Monday or Tuesday weakness and sell at least half into the Wednesday strength and get out on Friday. The chart below shows why you want to get out on Friday, because the next Monday was mostly weak, especially since year 2002, Dow down 7 out of 9. It also explains why you better sell half on Wednesday as all the Fridays recently were not so good. And yeah, Wednesday was so bullish.

MondayAfterThanksgiving

The chart below is from Bespoke which shows the week after the Thanksgiving is not so bright (not very bearish either though).

ThanksgivingInWeeklyView