The 2013 edition of the Almanac looks at the historic monthly performance of the FTSE 350 sectors. Here we look at the Construction & Materials sector.

The following chart plots the average out-performance of the FTSE 350 Construction & Materials sector over the FTSE 100 Index by month since 1999. For example, since 1999 on average the Construction & Materials sector has out-performed the FTSE 100 Index by 3.1 percentage points in January.

Observations:

1. The sector is strong relative to the whole market from November to March.
2. The strongest months are December, January and February – the sector has under-performed the market only twice in the past 13 years in February.
3. The weakest month has been October – the sector has out-performed the market only four times in this month in the last 14 years.

The four stocks in the FTSE 350 Construction & Materials sector [NMX2350] are-