Is November a good month for the Indian equity market?

From 1992 to 2000, every year in the month of November Sensex generated a negative return.

After showing a vertical rise in the last few months, the Indian equity market saw a correction of almost five per cent in the last couple of weeks of October. The month of November though started on a positive note, as it failed to maintain the momentum in the next couple of trading sessions. 

In this article, we will try to find the returns generated by the stock market historically in the month of November. For this, we have taken the Sensex data since 1979 and took monthly returns. Out of 42 years of study what we found that 22 times in the month of November, Sensex has generated negative returns, while 20 times it has generated positive returns. The average November month return for Sensex has been negative - 0.54 per cent. The average return when the Sensex gave a negative return has been negative 5.14 per cent, whereas in the case of a positive return it has been 4.53 per cent. 

The year 2007 was one of the best years when it comes to monthly November returns. Sensex was up by 14.7 per cent. Nevertheless, next year that is 2008, Sensex fell by 23.9 per cent in the month of November. From 1992 to 2000, every year in the month of November Sensex generated a negative return. 

The table below shows the key stats of the last 42 years November month returns. 

From the above table, November does not look like a good month for equity market returns measured from Sensex returns.