Trading term
What is Seasonality?
Seasonality is the idea that a market tends to do better or worse at a certain time of year, like a particular month.
Some seasonal patterns have a cause you can point to. Grain prices move with the harvest, and natural gas with the heating season. Others are just a record of past months, like crypto's "Uptober", the idea that bitcoin goes up in October.
A record alone is weak evidence. With twelve months to choose from, one of them will look good by luck. From 2011 to 2025, bitcoin rose in 10 of 15 Octobers. But when all the monthly changes were shuffled at random into 12 fake months, the best fake month did at least that well 99.8% of the time.
For example
Bitcoin rose in 9 of the 10 Octobers from 2015 to 2024, which is where the name Uptober comes from. It fell in 3 of the 4 before that, and fell again in October 2025.
Go hands-on in Premium
That's Seasonality in theory — it clicks when you read it on a live chart. Practise it hands-on in the TradeWize Premium Technical Analysis track.
Explore Premium →Why it matters to you
A seasonal pattern with a real cause can help with timing. One without a cause is often just the luckiest month in a small sample, and it can stop working the year you trade it.
⚠ Picking the best month after the fact
If you look at twelve months and pick the best one, it will always look special. Ask whether a random month could have done as well, and whether there's a reason the pattern should exist.