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Growth Was The Caboose On Stock Funds In January Small value's gain of 0.6% was only positive result; mid-cap growth fell 3.5%.(SERIES: FUNDS & PERSONAL FINANCE)(IBD SPECIAL REPORT)
Byline: KEN HOOVER
An old Wall Street saw has it that as goes January, so goes the year.
Like a lot of old saws, you shouldn't bet your life savings on it. But this one does have a historical record behind it. The January Barometer, as The Stock Trader's Almanac calls it, has been wrong in predicting the direction of the S&P 500 for the rest of the year only three times since 1950, not counting six years that were basically flat.
In case you missed it, January 2002 was down, though the downturn was modest by the standards of the bear market of 2000-2001. The S&P 500 lost 1.5%, the Dow Jones industrials fell 1% and the usually volatile Nasdaq dropped a mere 0.8%.
Maybe January portends another bad year, or maybe it doesn't. But it did add up to another lackluster month for mutual funds. The …
