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Over what timeframe?

If you’re a buy-n-hold investor, the difference is so small as to not be worth your trouble.

If you’re a swing trader or day trader, well now, there’s some patterns that matter.

Since 2000, Monday and Friday have been battling for the worst day of the week (or the first/last trading day of the week has been the worst day of the week on short weeks like this week). Wednesday has been the best day of the week (for longs) since 2000.

Down Fridays, especially Fridays that are down hard into the close, are often followed by down Mondays.

Here’s the long-term patterns, expressed as a percentage of the times the market closed higher than the previous day, per day of the week, based on SP500 index. “Monday” denotes the first trading day of the week, “Friday” denotes the last trading day of the week.

During 35 years of bull markets:
Mon: 51.5%
Tue: 52.9%
Wed: 58.4%
Thu: 53.2%
Fri: 60.2%

During 20 years of bear markets:
Mon: 40.9%
Tue: 48.5%
Wed: 52.1%
Thu: 50.6%
Fri: 49.8%

This is from June 1952, to April 2007.

As you see, during bear markets, traders don’t like to hold positions over the weekend, or they clean up positions on Mondays.

We’re in a bear market.

All this information and more can be found in the Hirsch’s Stock Trader’s Almanac. They also have a version for commodity traders. They look at seasonal, weekly, daily, hourly, presidential cycles, business cycles, etc over decades of stock market behavior.

One thing that comes through from their research and quantification is that “sell in May and go away” is still very, very true. The months from October to April are the best in the market, and if you found the best stocks to buy (based on MACD indicators) in October, bought and held through April of the following year, then sold, you hold on to more gains than if you held the position through the summer. Summers are just not a good time to hold stocks, overall, if you’re a trader. If you’re an investor, then you can ignore these patterns and stats. Just buy SP500 index funds with a cost-averaging program and you’re going to beat 80% of mutual funds with active management out there.