The Late-Summer Growth Re-Entry

Twice this year the book bought large-cap growth — the May entry and its June leg — and both rides run into next spring. So let us be plain about who this signal is for: the book adds nothing on August 20. This one is for the reader who watched May go by, decided to wait for a pullback that never came, and has been flat growth ever since. The almanac's answer is a second door, three months later, with a record nearly as good as the first: from the August 20 close through May 20 of the following year, large-cap growth has finished higher in 20 of 24 years, 9 of the last 10, with a +9.7% median — the largest median return of any signal on this year's calendar.

The timing is not an accident. August 20 sits at the mouth of Jackson Hole week. The symposium is late August's one scheduled catalyst, and its historical bias is risk-on — the launch that carries the thin-tape summer base into the autumn advance. The window then swallows every seasonal tailwind in sequence: the fourth-quarter rally, the turn of the year, the January effect, and the spring run, exiting before "sell in May" has anything to say. The record already contains twenty-four Jackson Holes; the trade needs no forecast of this one, only the discipline to be aboard before it.

The same date confirms internationally. On August 20 the screen also flags six-month variants in the two markets the book bought last Thursday: Taipei into February 18 (21 of 25, +8.4% median — its strongest configuration of the year) and Toronto into February 18 (20 of 25, +7.3% median). If you took the Aug 13 trio, these are confirmation, not new trades — the same current, read a week later, still flowing the same direction. Three unrelated screens agreeing on one date is the almanac's version of a second opinion.

Respect the shape of the losses. Four misses in twenty-four years, but two of them were catastrophic: −25.8% in 2008 and −20.6% in 2021 — each the opening act of a growth bear market. This signal's failure mode is not a shallow fade; it is being long growth when the regime breaks. That argues for defined risk: IWF or VUG for the position itself, or long-dated calls — January 2027 expiries leave the final four months uncovered, so January 2028 LEAPS are the honest bracket for the full window. Size for the −20% tail, and the 83% base rate does the rest.