S&P 500 Has Risen After All 19 Midterms, but 2026 Presents a Different Test

For anyone who follows market seasonality, the midterm elections mark a point in the four-year presidential cycle with one of the cleanest records there is.

I lined up every presidential cycle since 1949 on weekly closes of the S&P 500 and measured from the same point in each one: the last full week before the midterm election.

Nineteen Out of Nineteen

From the week before the midterm to the end of the following year, the pre-election year, roughly 14 months, the S&P 500 rose in every one of the 19 completed cycles.

Average gain: +20.3%, median +22.3%

Best: +43.6%

Weakest: +1.3% (1985–88 and 2013–16), flat years, not losses

The Short Term Is Less Clean

To the end of the midterm year, about two months, the index rose in 15 of 19 cycles, by +3.6% on average, with a range from −7.0% to +13.6%.

The Typical Path

The average cycle shows the textbook pattern: little progress in the first two years, a typical low around the midterm, then the strongest stretch into the pre-election year. The spread around that average is wide, though. Within the midterm year alone, cycles ranged from 48% down (1973–76, at the bottom of 1974) to 64% up (1997–2000).

This Cycle Is Different: It Is Already Far Ahead

The 2025–28 cycle skipped the usual weak midterm year. In the last week before the midterm, the S&P 500 stood 27.6% above its first weekly close of 2025 (from 5,942 to 7,580). The average cycle was up 8.9% at this point, the median 10.0%, and the middle half of all cycles sat between −3.6% and +23.3%. Only three cycles were further ahead: 1985–88 (+49.1%), 1997–2000 (+46.9%) and 2013–16 (+37.6%).

There is a hint, and it points in the expected direction. Here are the five cycles that were furthest ahead in the week before the midterm, and what followed to the end of the pre-election year:

1985–88: +49.1% before the midterm, then +1.3%

1997–2000: +46.9%, then +33.7%

2013–16: +37.6%, then +1.3%

1949–52: +27.2%, then +20.5%

2009–12: +27.0%, then +6.3%

On average these five gained 12.6% afterwards, the other fourteen 23.1%. Three of the five went on to small gains, and the two flattest outcomes of all, the +1.3% years, both came from this group. But 1997–2000 shows the other side: the second-strongest start was followed by one of the best stretches on record.

But the Hint Is Weak:

The starting level explains about 6% of the differences in what followed (r = −0.24, R² = 0.06).

It is not statistically significant. A permutation test gives p = 0.33. The rank correlation, which is less sensitive to single extreme cycles, is −0.27 (p = 0.26). A bootstrap puts the 95% interval for the correlation at −0.66 to +0.26, which includes zero.

The direction is stable, though: leaving out any single cycle keeps the correlation negative, between −0.09 and −0.39. Comparing the five strongest starts with the other fourteen directly gives p = 0.13, closer, but still not significant.

The fitted line is nearly flat: about +21% after a flat start, about +18% after a start like today’s.

With 19 cycles, the data cannot separate a weaker continuation after strong starts from chance. And even the strong starts went on to gain.

What About Buying the Midterm-Year Low?

A popular version of the pattern starts at the lowest point of the midterm year. Measured that way, the S&P 500 was higher one year later in all 19 cycles, by between +10.9% (1978) and +56.0% (1982), and by 31.0% in the median.

It looks better than it can be traded, because the low of a year is only known once the year is over, and buying exactly at the bottom is a best case. In 2026 the low came in the spring, so this version says little about the months ahead.

And Trading Volume?

Another common claim is that markets get quieter, or busier, before a midterm. I checked the S&P 500’s daily volume in the one and three months before each midterm since 1950, normalized by its own four-year average so that the long-term growth in volume does not distort the comparison. Midterm years did not differ from other years in any version of the test (p-values between 0.24 and 0.88). Whatever the cycle does, it does not show up in volume.

What the Record Can and Cannot Say

Nineteen out of nineteen is an unusually clean record, but it is still only 19 cases. They overlap with everything else that drove those years, from interest rates to recessions, and there is no mechanism that forces the pattern to repeat. The current cycle also starts from a level that only three cycles had reached at this point.

The fair reading is a base rate, not a forecast: historically, the 14 months after a midterm have been the most reliable stretch of the presidential cycle, and a high starting level has not broken that record so far.

Data: S&P 500 price index (without dividends), weekly closes since 1949 from Yahoo Finance, through 30 October 2026. All numbers describe past cycles. They are not forecasts and not financial advice.