In spite of traders’ superstitions, last Friday the 13-th was pretty successful for markets. Is there a rational explanation? Let us try to understand it.

According to newsfeed it is obvious that there weren’t any positive changes or serious news. Thus a couple of leading American banks reported their results. Wells Fargo got by 15% more profit for the first quarter of 2012, in comparison with a year earlier, but the profits of J.P.Morgan Chase turned out to be worse than the prognosis. The prices of manufacturers in the USA have increased by 0.1%, though a decrease by 0.4% was expected. However these were all economy news worth paying attention to for the day. Nothing special, and since under the conditions of prolonged decrease a famous English saying works well “no news is good news”, the background at least did not hamper the development.

Another reason for Friday recoil is traders’ extreme superstitiousness and their hasty withdrawal from the exposed positions, due to fear of serious fluctuations, and since the majority of exposed positions were short, the reverse bail-out stimulated market rollback.

Therefore the market increased on Friday the 13-th and did not collapse as you would have expected.

However, one should not dwell in hopes of continuing growth next week, since there are no positive news, and many would try to sell at the earliest opportunity.Nevertheless, there wouldn’t be a big slump. As a result the market may get under way in trading bands during the following week.