The broad market S&P500 SPY is up 2.58% since the beginning of 2023. This is one of the strongest starts ever for US stock markets.

On the surface, that only returns a small fraction of the returns investors lost in 2022, but loudly Ryan Detrickthese gains have a deeper meaning.

What happened: Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group Incwhich has become known as one of the leading providers of bullish data indicators, said if the SPY is up more than 2% in the first five trading days of the year, it will end the year higher – 94.12%. all the time.

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Detrick trawled through data going back to 1950 and found that as the SPY gained more than 2% in the first five trading days of the year, it ended the year higher 16 out of 17 times and averaged 17.8% gained .

Interestingly, he noted that the first five trading days of 2022 were weak. They were, and while the SPY lost about 20% over the past year, it lost 2.14% in the first week of 2022.

Why it matters: As bad as 2022 was for investors, Detrick noted in a recent report blog entry that stocks have fallen in consecutive years since 1950 only during the 1973–1974 recession. After that, stocks fell for three consecutive years during the tech bubble implosion of the early 2000s.

The market strategist sees a good chance that the shares will rise by the end of 2023.

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