Hot Stocks for March 1, 2023 - AA, EQT, NTES, M Seasonality

Looking for stocks to trade and want to plan ahead of time? The StockOdds Seasonality Dashboard is a great resource for identifying potential bullish and bearish trade ideas in a given seasonality period. Whether you're interested in monthly, first or last trading day, mid-month, or option expiration performance, this tool can provide quick insights into which stocks, ETFs, or other securities are likely to see significant movement. In this case, we’ll look at a basket with a few symbols that typically have either bullish or bearish performance on the first trading day of March.

Seasonality for The First Trading Day of March 2023

Using the Free Seasonality Almanac for traders, we can generate ideas for stocks to trade during many seasonality windows. In this case, we’ll look at the First Trading Day of March, which for this year is March 1 and falls on a Wednesday. On the first page of the dashboard, we can pick the top stocks to buy long and the top stocks to short by considering both the Average % Change and Odds data, and also taking into account outliers that may skew the data. In this case, we’ll look at Alcoa Corp, EQT Corp, NetEase Inc, and Macy’s Inc.

For the first trading day of March, historically, AA has 83.3 Odds of going up (which means it has moved higher on this same day 5 out of 6 years on this day), on average +3.56%, and EQT has 87.5 Odds with average moves of +3.33%. On the bearish side, historically, NTES has 75.0 Odds of going down on average by -1.20%, and M has 62.5 Odds of going down on average by -0.95%.

These numbers are drawn from the previous 8 years for EQT, NTES and M and previous 6 years for AA. This can be found by hovering your mouse over the expected performance (green and red) bars, as seen below, and looking at the number of Events.

Traders can use this information for context as to the seasonality of NTES and M, which may qualify as shorts, or AA and EQT, which may be suitable longs. Traders may want to look at additional Signals for each stock individually before entering a trade to “line up the ducks” with complimentary Odds and average performance for the same day, or even for longer and overlapping periods, based on MFI, Bollinger Bands, Momentum and others. Even better would be checking the Top 10 Odds to see if these show up in the top Odds for the day.

Additional Signals can be found through the Dashboard Reports or through the WebScreener. As we near the end of the month, traders typically look at RSI and %BB values for confirming Odds and average performance.

Before taking these statistics for granted, it is important to look for factors which may have contributed to past performance. For these hot stocks, the latest quarterly earnings are typically released sometime in February or March (more details below). When it comes to earnings, there can be cases of “Buying the hype, selling the news,” which also contribute to their Odds and average performance on the first trading day of March.

AA Seasonality for March 2023

Navigating to the second page of the Seasonality Almanac, we can take a closer look at Alcoa Corp's performance for the entire month of March, alongside SPY for context.

Looking at the bottom of the above screenshot, we can see the historical performance of SPY is positive on the first trading day of March, compared to AA which far outperforms the index. Also looking in the right-hand section, we can see the top 8 bullish seasonality signals for AA. 

The average monthly performance of AA has averaged -15.2%, with most of the positive performance typically coming from the first trading day and first Friday seasonality windows in March. AA’s typical trading activity can also include some mean-reversion to its typical negative monthly performance during mid-month, as well as in between seasonality windows. This, along with looking at how AA is currently performing for the past month, can help frame intraday or swing trades for AA for March.

AA’s latest quarterly earnings report is expected to be released on April 19, 2023.

EQT Seasonality for March 2023

Navigating to the second page of the Seasonality Almanac, we can take a closer look at EQT Corp’s performance for the entire month of March, alongside SPY for context.

Looking at the bottom Seasonality Timeline, we can see the historical performance of EQT outperforms the SPY in most seasonality windows, especially on the first trading day of March. Also looking in the rightmost section, we can see the top 8 bullish seasonality signals for EQT during the month.

The monthly performance of EQT in March has averaged +5.4%, and we can see most seasonality windows (except for 3^rd Friday) contribute to its positive performance, with mean-reversion during other periods of the month. This can all help frame intraday or swing trades for EQT for the month of March, with positive performance expected on the first day, middle and in the last week of the month.

EQT’s latest quarterly earnings report was released on February 15, 2023.

NTES Seasonality for March 2023

Navigating to the second page of the Seasonality Almanac, we can take a closer look at NetEase Inc’s performance for the entire month of March, alongside SPY for context.

Looking at the Seasonality Timeline at the bottom, we can see NTES historically underperforms the index during first trading day in March. Given the average monthly performance of +2.7% and historical performance during other seasonality windows, this would indicate negative or mean-reverting action outside of the given seasonality windows. This can help frame intraday or swing trades for NTES for other days in the month.

Looking in the right-hand section, we can see the top 8 seasonality signals for NTES, from bullish to bearish. Since NTES is a potential short for March, we can refer to these signals to see the least bearish times to trade NTES stock.

NTES’s latest quarterly earnings report was released on February 23, 2023.

M Seasonality for March 2023

Navigating to the second page of the Seasonality Almanac, we can take a closer look at Macy’s Inc’s performance for the entire month of March, alongside SPY for context.

Looking at the bottom timeline, we can see M historically underperforms the SPY during the first two and last two seasonality windows. Given the average monthly performance of -7.0% and negative performance during most seasonality windows, this would indicate largely muted or choppy action during the most of March, with an expectation of gradual bearish action during the month.

In the right-hand section of the above screenshot, we can see the top 8 seasonality signals for M, from bullish to bearish. Since M is a potential short for the First Trading Day of March, we can refer to this section to see seasonality windows that indicate the least bearish performance for the rest of the month.

M’s latest quarterly earnings report is expected to be released on March 2, 2023, which may have a significant impact on M’s performance on March 1.

Closing Thoughts

The Seasonality Almanac Dashboard uses close-to-close (CC) performance, so one looking to take these trades has a few options. One could enter positions at the close on the last day of February and exit at the close of the first trading day of March or enter at the Open on March 1 if conditions are favorable. There’s also the possibility of partially entering and exiting positions within these windows. 

It’s worth considering, with overnight or even intraday trades, even though one has curated a high-probability trade, the market could interfere with its own agenda (that being what is most probable to occur). Most stocks tend to be impacted by larger market moves, so it is an advantage to hedge any trades in some way. Even with this in mind, why trade probability-blind when you can trade hedged, with the Odds!

If trading the above stocks in a combined basket, it is worth considering all four stocks may not have much correlation, due to differing industries and sectors.

By looking at the summary numbers at the bottom of the dashboard, we can see that 94% of stocks in the dashboard that meet our filter criteria have a positive expectation for the first trading day this month. In addition to this, we can also see that just over half the stocks are expected to underperform the S&P 500 ETF on this day. This can help set the context for March 1 as well.

If you’re a trader or investor, then we highly recommend that you take our Seasonality Dashboard course. In this course, not only will you learn more about why seasonality patterns exist and how to better utilize the Seasonal Almanac Dashboard but also have access to exclusive insights from some of the world's leading traders on using probability-based approaches for trading.