Debunkification?

Tobias Levkovich said August is "usually an up month," the Stallion tried to correct him saying that it is the second worse month for the last 50 years. Tobias countered that he means for the last 25 years so as to exclude the 1970's.

Here is the month by month count of down months going back to 1982 inclusive. You can draw your own conclusion about August.

Jan 8 declines
Feb 10
Mar 9
Apr 9
May 8
Jun 10
Jul 15
Aug 10
Sep* 14
Oct* 10
Nov* 7
Dec* 6

* Includes 1981 to have 25 years

August is tied for the third worst month but it is up most of the time. So what is the best way to think of August? Why does it get a bad rap? It turns out that in the last 25 years August has had 3 declines of 5% or more. Only September has had more 5% declines with 4 occurrences. I picked 5% because I think it is a big number for just one month. There are six months with only one 5% decline in the last 25 years, three months have had it happen twice and in December there has not been a 5% decline at any point in the last 25 years.

Does this matter? Maybe not but I think saying August is usually an up month, while technically true paints a misleading picture. The fact is the market is up most of the time so most data points will skew to being higher but clearly the market has a higher likelihood of struggling in August than most other months.