Home / Ideas / Gold Month-of-Year Seasonality
Gold Month-of-Year Seasonality
own gold in its historically strong months, sit out the weak spring window
Gold shows one of the more persistent single-asset monthly seasonals — historical strength in late-summer/autumn (Aug-Oct) and January driven by physical demand cycles (Diwali, Chinese New Year, jewelry restocking) and weakness across the March-June window; avoiding the weak months has historically compounded materially better than buy-and-hold while diversifying an equity-seasonality book.
Universe
GLD (or IAU) as the gold proxy; optional cash/T-bill leg in weak months; free daily yfinance OHLCV.
How it works
Hold GLD during historically strong months (default: July-February) and move to cash during the weak March-June window; single annual on/off calendar rule, no leverage.
Expected performance
Research-derived Sharpe estimate: 0.3-0.6. seasonal timing has beaten gold buy-and-hold in reported studies but lags in strong bull runs; wide band, single-asset, event-override risk).
Backtest this idea with SignalChain
This is a research lead — not a finished backtest. SignalChain takes an idea like this and runs the whole pipeline inside Claude Code: it researches the concept against academic and practitioner sources, sets benchmarks, writes and lints a VectorBT backtest, runs it, and grades the result PASS/FAIL. One command:
/signalchain Hold GLD July through February and move to cash March through June, single annual calendar on/off rule, no leverage.
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Research & sources
- ingoldwetrust.report — ingoldwetrust.report
- finance.yahoo.com — finance.yahoo.com
More Seasonality & calendar effects ideas
Not financial advice. This page describes a research idea, not a recommendation. Any performance figures are hypothetical, research-derived estimates and are not indicative of future results. SignalChain is a research and educational tool; you are solely responsible for any decisions you make.