Today is July 9, 2026. On the presidential election cycle clock, that makes this a midterm year, what TradeWave labels PE+2. Eighty days from now, on September 27, the window we named a book after opens: the 100-Year Pattern.
This article is about the stretch in between, because the quiet part of the calendar is measurable too. But first, here is where the road leads. This is the S&P 500 index in the live Wave Viewer, September 27 start, 295 calendar days held, midterm years only, every available cycle since 1930:
Twenty-three of twenty-four cycles profitable. The one failure is 1930, at the depth of the Great Depression. Hold that image; the rest of this article is about the eighty days between today and that window’s opening bell.
July Has a Reputation. Midterm July Has a Number
Every trader has heard “Sell in May and go away.” The saying survives because people have felt it. But sayings do not come with numbers, and when you put numbers on this one, something specific happens: it stops being a universal market law and concentrates almost entirely in midterm years.
Measured across 24 complete election cycles of S&P 500 history (1930 through 2022), May 1 to October 31 is cumulatively negative in exactly one of the four year types: PE+2, the midterm year, at -34% cumulative. The same May-to-October stretch in the other three year types is positive. And the six months that follow the midterm weakness, November through April, compound to +958% across those same cycles.
That is the stretch the market is standing in right now. Not a prediction. A description of where July 9 of a midterm year sits in a century of measured behavior.
What the Scanner Shows Today
Talk is cheap, so here is the Opportunity Table this morning: S&P 500 stocks, the PE+2 lens on, screened for windows that were profitable in 15 of 15 qualifying midterm cycle years.
One row. A single long window on MRK: 311 days, profitable in 15 of 15 qualifying midterm cycle years, averaging 25.7% per instance with a Sharpe ratio of 1.36.
Five hundred names scanned through the midterm lens at the strictest consistency screen, and July offers one setup. That is not the scanner failing. That is the scanner telling you what July in a midterm year is: thin. The folklore says summer is sleepy. The measurement says how sleepy, and in which years, and what the exception looks like.
The Window That Opens September 27
Now the reason this particular July is worth an article: the numbers behind the bars you saw at the top. Every bar in that chart carries its MFE above and its MAE below, because a pattern is not just how often it won but what the ride looked like along the way. And here is the Stats Table for the same window, live today:
If you have read the book, these numbers will look familiar. They should. The tables in chapter 7 are not artist’s renderings; they are this screen. Cumulative return 5,045%. Buy-and-hold across the same midterm years: 63%. Average gain per cycle about 19%, median 18.9%, one average loss of -23.4% (that is 1930 again). The window where the messiest year of the cycle historically stops being messy.
The Shape of the Window
Averages hide the path, so here is the path: the last ten midterm cycles stacked into a single trend line.
Read the left edge carefully, because it is the honest part. The window does not open smoothly. The first weeks overlap what we call the Lost Summer Effect, the September 4 to October 25 stretch that averages about -1% across long-term history while optimized seasonal windows average closer to +9%. The pattern historically absorbs an ugly first few weeks and then does its work through winter and spring, peaking into the July 18 close. If you expect the start to feel comfortable, the data says you will be disappointed on schedule.
Bias Is Not a Trigger
One more honest detail, straight from today’s screen: the Stats Table currently shows Trend Alignment as Against (38) for this window. The seasonal evidence says September 27; the trend gauge says the tape is not there yet. That is not a contradiction. That is the system working.
Seasonality sets the bias. The trigger is confirmation, and the exits are decided before entry: an MFE-informed target, an MAE-informed stop, a time horizon. Between now and September 27 sit eighty days, the tail of the midterm summer and the whole of the Lost Summer window. The historical playbook for that stretch is patience, not heroics.
What This Is and Is Not
This is not a prophecy. The window failed once, in 1930, and nothing prevents it from failing again. Results shown are historical and simplified and do not include taxes or trading frictions. Seasonality is probability, not protection.
But probability, measured across nearly a century and shown with its work, is a different starting point than a saying. Most traders spend July of a midterm year being told the market is chaos. The data says this particular stretch is the quietest room in the building, right before the most reliable one in the dataset opens its doors.
You do not have to take our word for any of it. The screenshots above are the live product. Open this exact pattern in the Wave Viewer and check the bars yourself, or start with the free wave viewer tour and load SPX, September 27, 295 days, PE+2 years. The numbers will be waiting.