Which Stocks and ETFs Follow the S&P 500’s Seasonal Pattern? We Ranked 160 Symbols

Every year the S&P 500 traces a recognisable seasonal shape: a slow start, a spring rally, a soft late summer and a strong finish from October to December. But which individual stocks, sector funds and other assets follow that same calendar rhythm, and which march to a different drummer? We compared the average seasonal pattern of every symbol on SeasonalityCharts.com that has at least 15 years of history with SPY’s, over exactly the same years, and ranked them. Here is what the data shows as of November 2026.

• 160 symbols had enough overlapping history to compare with SPY (32 complete years, 1994–2025).
• 28 follow SPY’s seasonal timing closely (similarity of 0.70 or more), 81 moderately, 41 weakly, and 10 tend to move the opposite way.
• Outside the funds that simply hold the S&P 500, the most SPY-like assets are broad market funds such as the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) and the Dow (DIA), followed by the industrial, consumer discretionary and technology sector funds.
• Among individual stocks, old-economy industrials and big banks track the market’s calendar best: Union Pacific, Intel, Honeywell, Cisco, American Express, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Home Depot.
• Long-term Treasuries (TLT), the US dollar (UUP) and volatility (VIX) run counter to the market’s seasonal pattern, while gold and oil barely relate to it at all.

The S&P 500’s seasonal pattern in one paragraph

Averaged over the 32 complete years from 1994 to 2025, SPY has been up about 0.7% by the end of January, 1.4% by the end of March and 4.2% by the end of May. Gains stall through the summer: the average stands at 6.0% at the end of July and slips to 5.1% by the end of September, the market’s historically weakest stretch. Then the fourth quarter takes over, lifting the average to 6.8% at the end of October, 9.6% at the end of November and 10.3% by year end. You can see the full daily curve, every individual year and the current year’s path on the SPY seasonality page.

How we measured “follows the S&P 500’s seasonality”

Comparing raw lines is misleading, because almost everything rises over a year and so every line slopes up and to the right. What matters is timing: does a symbol tend to rise in the same weeks that SPY rises and stall when SPY stalls? To answer that we:

1. Built each symbol’s average year-to-date path from daily closing prices, compounded, with every year carried across weekends and holidays.
2. Used only the years both the symbol and SPY have in full, so a stock that listed in 2010 is compared with SPY’s 2011–2025 pattern, not its 1994–2025 one.
3. Cut both paths into weekly steps and calculated the correlation between those weekly moves. A score of 1 means the two rise and fall in exactly the same weeks; 0 means no relationship; a negative score means they tend to move in opposite directions.
4. Counted how many of the 12 months the symbol’s average moved in the same direction as SPY’s, as a plain-English cross-check.

Because the score measures timing rather than size, a leveraged fund that moves three times as much as the market can still score close to 1, and a stock with a much bigger annual gain can still be a near-perfect seasonal match.

The most SPY-like seasonal patterns

The chart below shows SPY’s average seasonal path (thick dark line) against the eight most similar symbols, excluding funds that simply hold the S&P 500 (VOO, IVV and the index itself score 0.97–0.99, which is reassuring but not interesting). Three are switched on to start; click any name in the legend to add or remove it.

Click a name in the legend to show or hide it. SPY is the thick dark line; the number after each symbol is its similarity score.

The top of the list is dominated by broad funds, which makes sense: the more stocks a fund holds, the more its calendar looks like the whole market’s. The total stock market (VTI) scores 0.97 and moved in the same direction as SPY in all 12 months, followed by the Dow (DIA) at 0.96 and dividend growers (VIG) at 0.94. The best-matching sector funds are industrials (XLI) at 0.91, consumer discretionary (XLY) at 0.90 and technology (XLK) at 0.89. The Nasdaq indexes, small caps (IWM) and even developed international markets (EFA, 0.85) follow the same broad shape, if a little more loosely.

Individual stocks that follow the market’s calendar

Single stocks carry their own news, earnings dates and product cycles, so none matches SPY as tightly as a fund. Of the 103 stocks we could compare, the closest seasonal followers are long-established, economically sensitive companies:

Stock	Sector	Similarity	Months moving with SPY
Union Pacific (UNP)	Industrials	0.73	10 of 12
Intel (INTC)	Technology	0.71	8 of 12
Honeywell (HON)	Industrials	0.71	11 of 12
Cisco (CSCO)	Technology	0.69	9 of 12
American Express (AXP)	Financials	0.69	9 of 12
Citigroup (C)	Financials	0.69	9 of 12
JPMorgan Chase (JPM)	Financials	0.69	11 of 12
Home Depot (HD)	Consumer Discretionary	0.69	9 of 12

Grouped by sector, the pattern is clear. The median similarity is highest for financials (0.65) and industrials (0.64), followed by consumer staples (0.57), consumer discretionary (0.54), real estate (0.54) and technology (0.51). It is lowest for energy (0.48), health care (0.34), communication services (0.26) and utilities (0.17). Banks and industrial companies are tied to the business cycle and to the same flows that drive the index; utilities, drug makers and telecoms march more to interest rates, regulation and their own pipelines.

Assets that go their own way, or the opposite way

At the other end of the ranking are the assets whose seasonal timing is unrelated or inverse to the market’s. This chart shows SPY against the eight least similar symbols; again, three are visible to start.

Click a name in the legend to show or hide it. SPY is the thick dark line; the number after each symbol is its similarity score.

Some of these are inverse by design. SQQQ is a three-times leveraged short Nasdaq-100 fund, so a score of −0.77 is exactly what you would expect, and the VIX volatility index (−0.69) tends to rise when stocks fall. More useful for diversification are long-term Treasuries: TLT scores −0.43 and the 7–10 year fund IEF −0.34, meaning bonds have tended to do relatively better in the weeks when stocks are seasonally weak. The US dollar fund (UUP, −0.29) and the Japanese yen (FXY, −0.18) behave similarly.

Among individual stocks, the least SPY-like are a mix of special situations and defensive businesses: GameStop (−0.19, its averages are dominated by the 2021 squeeze), Comcast (0.01), Inovio (0.04), Eli Lilly (0.11), and the utilities Duke Energy (0.14) and Southern Company (0.17).

What about gold, oil and other commodities?

Commodities mostly follow their own calendars. Physical gold (IAU, 0.15) and crude oil (USO, 0.15) show almost no seasonal relationship with the stock market, and natural gas (UNG, 0.21) and corn (CORN, 0.26) little more. The exceptions are funds that hold companies rather than the commodity itself: gold miners (GDX, 0.45) and uranium miners (URA, 0.57) behave partly like stocks, because they are stocks.

How traders and investors can use this

• Confirmation. If you are considering a seasonal idea in a stock that closely follows SPY, check the market’s own seasonal picture first. A strong stock-specific window that coincides with the market’s weak late-summer stretch deserves extra scrutiny.
• Diversification. Holdings with low or negative similarity, such as Treasuries or gold, have historically smoothed the calendar’s rough patches. That is a tendency, not a guarantee: in some years stocks and bonds fall together.
• Relative strength. For stocks that follow SPY’s timing, the interesting question is often how much more or less they move in a given window. Every symbol page now includes a “vs the market” chart that shows exactly that gap.
• Hedging context. Inverse and volatility products move against the market by construction, and leveraged funds lose value over time in choppy markets. Their seasonal averages describe the past behaviour of very different instruments, not a free hedge.

Limitations worth knowing

Similarity scores are averages over long and very different periods, from the 1990s technology boom to the 2008 crisis and the 2020 pandemic. A high score says the two seasonal averages move together, not that any single year will. Fifteen to thirty-two years is a modest sample, a few extreme years can tilt an average (GameStop is the obvious example), prices exclude dividends, and correlation says nothing about cause. Funds that hold the S&P 500 match it by definition, and different listing dates mean some symbols are compared over shorter windows; the table shows the exact years used for each.

Frequently asked questions

Which stocks follow the S&P 500’s seasonality most closely?

Among individual stocks with 32 years of shared history, Union Pacific, Intel, Honeywell, Cisco, American Express, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Home Depot have the most similar seasonal timing, with similarity scores between 0.69 and 0.73. Broad funds such as VTI and DIA match even more closely.

Which assets move opposite to the stock market’s seasonal pattern?

Inverse funds such as SQQQ and the VIX volatility index move against it by design. Among ordinary assets, long-term Treasury bonds (TLT, IEF) and the US dollar (UUP) have had negative seasonal similarity with SPY.

Does gold follow the stock market’s seasonality?

Hardly. Physical gold (IAU) has a similarity of only 0.15 with SPY’s seasonal pattern. Gold mining stocks (GDX, 0.45) follow the market more, because they are companies listed on the stock market.

How often is this ranking updated?

The charts and ranking tables in this article are calculated from the same daily data as the rest of the site and refresh automatically. Because the averages use complete calendar years only, the scores change mainly when a new year is completed.

Not investment advice. This article describes historical seasonal averages calculated from daily closing prices. Past patterns do not predict future results, and similarity in the past does not guarantee similarity in the future. Do your own research and consult a licensed professional before making any investment decision. See our Disclaimer.