Chinese New Year rally?

Investors are familiar with the concept of a “Santa Claus” rally. In his Next Inning, however, Paul McWiliams looks at a less well-known seasonal pattern involving the Chinese New Year.

“With the growth of Asian consumerism we’ve seen a progressive shift in holiday shopping patterns.

“While the Christmas holiday shopping season still dominates these seasonal patterns, the Chinese New Year has significantly grown in importance during the last decade.

“Because there is not a fixed date for the Chinese New Year, it has caused some forecasters to misjudge its growing influence on seasonal production and shopping patterns.

“The Chinese New Year falls on the second new moon following the winter solstice. Chinese New Year celebrations tend to start about two weeks before the event and run for about two weeks following, with the final celebration called the Festival of Lanterns.

“For 2010, the Chinese New Year falls on February 14th and the Festival of Lanterns falls on February 28th. What makes this interesting is that in 2009, the New Year fell on January 26th.

“This means that last year the New Year was predominately a January event that negatively impacted semiconductor sales that month due to company shut-downs during the holiday and this year it will be predominately a February event that will positively impact January semiconductor sales; particularly for consumer electronics, personal computers and smartphones.

“In addition to the moving schedule flip-flopping between January and February, the growing importance of the event has tended to level out late Q4 production. When the holiday shopping season was so absolutely dominated by Christmas, production tended to tail off in December.

“However, with the rapid expansion of consumerism in Asian countries and the growing need to build for their seasonally high demand, the demand pattern for December has improved notably.

“As we move closer to the end of the year I expect we’ll start to see some press coverage describing the moving impact of the Chinese New Year and, with it, some analysts surprised as to how strong demand is holding in December and January.

“I think there is a reasonable chance that this will match up nicely with expectations of a strong January earnings season and therefore provide us with a good rally catalyst in late December and/or early January.”