Taking Stock in the Sun
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You can bet that people are in a good mood when the sun comes out, but would you bet money on it?

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Financial analysts don't usually consider the mood-lifting effects of sunshine when they look at the stock market, but a new study indicates they might want to.

Two business majors at Ohio State and the University of Michigan took a closer look at how sunshine might be tweaking the markets. They compared the morning sky conditions and the daily stock returns at 26 international exchanges over a 15-year period. Of course, when it's January in London, you don't need much sun to perk up your spirits. So the team adjusted the actual sunshine by the amount you'd expect at a given time and place. It turns out that rain and snow don't have a significant effect on stock returns, but sunshine's a different matter. In New York, the returns were only about 9 percent on overcast days but 25 percent on sunny days.

So can a savvy investor make a buck from looking at the sky on the way to Wall Street? After the researchers factored in the cost of buying and selling, they ended up with a portfolio that earns over 30 percent a year. That's more than pie in the sky-especially if the sky is blue.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. The program is supported in part by Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation. To give your weather portfolio a boost, go to our website at weathernotebook.org. Do you have questions or comments? Write to us at weathernotebook.org. Thanks today to Producer, Margaret Landsman.