Canadian investors can achieve greater returns by holding their Canadian stocks six weeks longer than their American neighbours retain theirs, according to new market research from TheUpTrend.com.

“We were interested in seeing if a best-six-months strategy of market timing worked in the Canadian market,” said Stephen Whiteside, TheUpTrend.com’s president, in a news release. This strategy, first discovered by Jeffrey Hirsch, publisher of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, found that the best time to buy and hold U.S. stocks was from Nov. 1 to April 30 each year.

“After analyzing the TSE/TSX data for the past 22 years we were very pleased with the results,” Whiteside said.

In a 22-year period extending from Jan. 2, 1980 to Nov. 1, 2002, the TSE experienced a net gain of 4,515.34 points to close at 6,321.40. Using Hirsch’s best-six-month strategy – buying on Nov.1 each year and selling on April 30 the next – one’s net gains would have increased to 5,890.67, an increase of 30.46% over simply buying and holding.

Investors who bought in the spring and sold in the fall were not treated as kindly. If you bought on April 30 each year and sold on Nov.1, you would have lost a total of 1,439.19 points over the 22-year period.

“We wanted to take this research one step further to see if Nov. 1 to April 30 was the best timeframe for Canadians,” Whiteside said. “What we found was that Canadians could do better by holding six weeks longer.”

If you bought on Oct. 27 each year and sold on June 5 the next year, your net gain would have increased to 9,483.89. This is an increase of 210% over simply buying and holding and a 61% increase over the original six-month strategy. Using this strategy would have been profitable in 17 of 22 years.

“To ensure that these results were not skewed by the final run-up of the bull market, we also looked at the results from 1980 to 1998,” said Whiteside. Using Hirsch’s best-six-months strategy resulted in a gain of 3,904 points. When the extra six weeks were added, however, gains increased to 6,213.22 TSE/TSX points over an 18-year period.

“The 59% increase over Mr. Hirsch’s original formula was in line with the 61% difference we found when including the bull market in its entirety,” Whiteside said.

For more information on this study visit: http://www.theuptrend.8k.com/special_reports.htm