Rainy Day Stats

It is raining today as I sit on my balcony.  So I figured I'd blog a few MFI stats.  Pretty funny, last night it began to rain as I sat out on a deck enjoying the view of Lake Geneva.  I wondered what people would do as the rain started.  The manager went and pushed a button and a gigantic awning folded out over all of us (it had Heineken ads on the inside).  Pretty slick.

My first meaningless statistic is the average return based on the month you buy.

Month	Average Change
1	2.2%
2	8.9%
3	6.5%
4	4.0%
5	6.4%
6	10.2%
7	-3.6%
8	0.1%
9	2.7%
10	9.0%
11	-0.4%
12	6.7%
Grand Total	4.0%

Now I am not sure why June is so much better than July.  Keep in mind that some portfolios may start on June 29th and others July 1st, so I'd guess that June got 2 in a year (say 2009) where MFI did great. Again, I think this is fun, but not full of meaning.

Ticker Length

This one actually stunned me.  I simply took the number of letters in the ticker symbol.  This is per yahoo, so they used to include "pk" or "ob" along with a dot.

Ticker Length	Average Change	Number
2	15.5%	127
3	10.6%	1,436
4	0.5%	2,288
5	10.1%	16
7	-53.6%	37
8	-66.1%	13
Grand Total	4.0%	3,917

I guess we should just buy ones with 2 or 3 letters!

First Letter of Ticker

Ok, I know I am now getting silly.


 

Ticker Length	Average Change	Number
A	-4.4%	301
C	1.5%	404
D	23.4%	177
E	6.6%	204
F	16.5%	154
G	0.8%	160
H	4.4%	161
I	5.6%	144
J	-8.2%	64
K	0.5%	156
M	9.4%	245
N	3.8%	137
P	4.2%	333
S	-1.2%	186
U	-0.3%	196
V	2.6%	200
W	-0.3%	51
B	4.1%	112
L	-2.1%	119
R	-0.5%	92
T	8.8%	211
o	-9.0%	60
X	-34.8%	14
Q	68.2%	29
Z	15.2%	6
Y	-97.2%	1
Grand Total	4.1%	3917

Wow, the average Q is up 68%?  I double checked that and it is driven by QCOR (a four letter ticker!)