Next Monday will be the first trading day (FTD) of July.
As explained in the 2013 edition of the Almanac, the market has a tendency to be strong on the FTD of a month. And this effect has been even more pronounced in recent years.
Along with April, the July FTD has been the strongest FTD of all 12 months: since 1984 the FTSE 100 Index has increased on average 0.44% on this day.
Although from 2000 the average return on the day has been weaker at 0.21%.
The following chart shows the returns for every July FTD since 1984.
