There’s an idea floating around trading circles, one that’s as seductive as it is simple: what if the market had a secret calendar? A predictable rhythm, where certain months consistently favor bulls and others favor bears. The recent focus on the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and its seasonal patterns is a perfect case study. The data, at first glance, seems to paint a clear picture.
According to analysis from Barchart contributor Gavin McMaster, the QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq 100, has a distinct personality. September is its annual slump. But come November, a powerful "winter tech rally" kicks off, running straight through March. For the past 15 years, this pattern has been remarkably consistent. The strategy writes itself: lighten up in late summer, then load up on tech for the holiday season and beyond. It’s the kind of clean, actionable insight that makes you feel like you’ve been given a page from the market’s playbook.
This concept is powerful because it offers a sense of control in an environment defined by chaos. It suggests that you don't need to predict earnings or Fed moves; you just need to check the date. As McMaster puts it, it’s about "trading with the wind at your back." But is the wind really blowing because it's November, or is the calendar just a bystander to a much larger storm?
The Problem with Looking Backwards
Here's where my skepticism kicks in. Any data set, if you slice it thinly enough, will show you patterns. The human brain is wired to find them. The core issue with the 15-year lookback period for QQQ’s seasonality is that those 15 years were not a random sample of market history. They almost perfectly encapsulate the post-2008 financial crisis era—a period defined by historically low, and then zero, interest rates (ZIRP), quantitative easing, and the meteoric, uninterrupted ascent of Big Tech.
Is it really a surprise that tech stocks performed well between November and March during this time? This period includes holiday consumer spending (hello, Amazon and Apple), end-of-year corporate budget spending, and the lead-up to Q1 earnings announcements. But more importantly, it all happened inside a decade-plus-long macro environment that was a rocket ship for growth assets. Attributing that performance to the month on the calendar is like noticing that a surfer catches the best waves in the afternoon and concluding that the time of day is what makes the waves big, ignoring the distant storm system that’s actually responsible. The calendar isn’t the cause; it’s just a correlational artifact.
I've looked at hundreds of these backtests, and the ones that rely on simple calendar dates are almost always the most fragile. They work perfectly until the moment the underlying macro regime shifts. What happens to the "winter tech rally" in a world with persistent 4% interest rates? What if the consumer finally pulls back? The seasonal chart won't give you the answer.
This is where the narrative gets more complex. While seasonality evangelists are looking at the calendar, analysts like Wedbush's Dan Ives are looking at the fundamental drivers. He argues we are not in a 1999-style bubble but a "1996 Moment"—the very beginning of a multi-year AI infrastructure buildout. He sees the current tech landscape as being driven by a "4th Industrial Revolution," a force far more powerful than which month it is. In this view, the strong performance of QQQ—which is up about 20%, or to be more exact, 18.7% year-to-date—isn't about a winter rally. It's about a technological revolution led by a handful of dominant companies (Nvidia being the most obvious outlier).
So, which is it? Is the market a clock, repeating its cycles with predictable precision? Or is it a runaway train, powered by a new technological engine that will render old timetables obsolete?
A Compass, Not a Map
The most prudent way to view seasonality is as a secondary indicator, a piece of ancillary data that might add a slight probabilistic edge to a trade already justified by fundamentals. It’s a compass, not a map. A compass can tell you which way is north, but it can't tell you if there’s a cliff in front of you.
Relying solely on a historical pattern like the "winter tech rally" is a bet that the future will look exactly like the recent past. That’s a dangerous assumption. The market's memory is short, and its ability to change its character is profound. The rise of AI as a secular growth driver completely scrambles the board. Does an AI-fueled rally care if it's September or January? It seems unlikely. A genuine technological paradigm shift doesn't check the calendar for permission.
This brings us to the central question for anyone looking at QQQ right now. Are you betting on a statistical pattern, or are you investing in a fundamental thesis? The seasonal argument suggests timing the market. The AI argument, as articulated by Ives, suggests buying the "tech winners" on any dip, regardless of the date, because the long-term trend is so overwhelmingly powerful.
The current analyst consensus on QQQ is a "Moderate Buy" with a price target implying roughly 8.7% upside. This feels more aligned with the secular growth story than a simple seasonal bet. It acknowledges the underlying strength without promising the moon. So, should you use seasonality to time your entry for a long call on QQQ in November? Perhaps. But a much better question to ask is: do you believe the AI revolution is real and enduring? If the answer is yes, then the month you buy in becomes far less important than the simple fact that you are in.
Don't Mistake the Shadow for the Object
Ultimately, seasonality is a shadow cast by larger economic and fundamental forces. For over a decade, those forces—low interest rates and the dominance of Big Tech—were stable, so the shadow they cast was regular and predictable. But a new object has moved in front of the light: the AI revolution. It's bigger, its shape is different, and it's going to cast a completely new shadow. Trying to trade based on the old one is a fool's errand. The data is real, but the conclusion that the calendar is the driver is a mirage.