Many market participants have heard of the “sell in May and go away” mantra, with good reason as equities and stock exchange traded funds typically experience their worst month of the year in June.
June has been the worst month for stocks over the past decade, with the S&P 500 averaging a 1.32% decline over the last 10 months of June, reports Laurie Kulikowski for TheStreet.
“June will be here quickly, and it has been by far the worst month for stocks over the last 10 years,” Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at MKM Partners, said in a note. “Therefore, some weakness into early summer would not be surprising, but in our view that would set-up a buying opportunity in July.”
For those who are wary of a potential pullback in the S&P 500 index this month, there are a number of bearish or inverse ETF options with varying levels of leveraged exposure to capitalize off a weakening S&P 500. The ProShares Short S&P500 (NYSEArca: SH) takes a simple inverse or -100% daily performance of the S&P 500 index. Alternatively, for the more aggressive trader, leveraged options include the ProShares UltraShort S&P500 ETF (NYSEArca: SDS), which tries to reflect the -2x or -200% daily performance of the S&P 500, the Direxion Daily S&P 500 Bear 3x Shares (NYSEArca: SPXS), which takes the -3x or -300% daily performance of the S&P 500, and ProShares UltraPro Short S&P 500 ETF (NYSEArca: SPXU), which also takes the -300% daily performance of the S&P 500. [Inverse S&P 500 ETF Ideas to Hedge a Correction]
Alternatively, investors can also capitalize off the fall in the widely viewed Dow Jones Industrial Average through the ProShares Short Dow30 ETF (NYSEArca: DOG), which tries to reflect the -100% daily performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For the more aggressive traders, the ProShares UltraShort Dow 30 ETF (NYSEArca: DXD) takes the -200% of the Dow Jones and the ProShares UltraPro Short Dow30 (NYSEArca: SDOW) reflects the -300% of the Dow. [Do You Know How Your Leveraged ETFs Work?]
Lastly, the ProShares Short QQQ ETF (NYSEArca: PSQ) takes the inverse or -100% daily performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index. For the aggressive trader, the ProShares UltraShort QQQ ETF (NYSEArca: QID) tracks the double inverse or -200% performance of the Nasdaq-100, and the ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF (NasdaqGM: SQQQ) reflects the triple inverse or -300% of the Nasdaq-100.