A Bull or a Bear, It's hard to gauge. But does January Set the stage? << TSE     S&P>>

The difference between the last two charts?
The bottom chart includes January.
Look at 1987: January was a great month.
It gave us a positive year even tho' the rest-of-the-year was negative
(as noted in the middle chart).
In 1994, too.
Aah, but in 1990, a lousy January dragged an otherwise good rest-of-year into the red

P.S. This phenomenon is (sometimes) called the January Barometer
and "As January goes ..." (sometimes) refers to the first week of January being indicative of the year.