The market’s relatively boring start to the year could foreshadow a potentially strong finish in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and index-related exchange traded funds.
Year-to-date, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEArca: DIA), which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average, rose 3.6%.
The Dow is trading in its tightest range for the first half of the year ever, CNBC reports.
“If you look at the high-to-low range for the Dow Jones industrial average for the first half of this year, as of now it’s just over 6 percent,” technical analyst Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at MKM Partners, said on CNBC.
The technical analyst argues that the slow start could portend positive performance as other periods of subdued volatility preceded gains in stocks for the rest of the year.
“Since 1896 there’s been 19 times that the Dow has traded in a range of less than 10 percent high to low,” Krinsky said. “Thirteen of those 19 times the Dow went on to gains in the second half of the year, and only three times of those 19, the Dow closed negative.”
The average year-to-date return of those 19 occurrences is positive 8.25%. However, there could be some selling pressure in the coming weeks as we head into the seasonally slow start of the summer.
“Everyone talks about sell in May and go away, but June is actually the worst month for the market over the last 10 years,” Krinsky added. “If we do see any weakness it could happen [in the next few weeks], but that would probably set up a buying opportunity over the back half of the year.”
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?]
Additionally, after the pullback, investors could ride the continued market strength with leveraged Dow ETFs, including the ProShares Ultra Dow30 (NYSEArca: DDM), which takes the 2x or 200% daily performance of the Dow, and the ProShares UltraPro Dow30 (NYSEArca: UDOW), which takes the 3x or 300% daily performance of the Dow.
For more information on the Dow, visit our Dow Jones Industrial Average category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.