Tomorrow will be the first trading day (FTD) of May.

As explained in the 2014 edition of the Almanac, the market has a tendency to be strong on the FTD of a month. And this effect has been even more pronounced in recent years.

Since 1984, the FTSE 100 Index has a return average of 0.08% on the May FTD, which makes it the fourth weakest FTD of the year. From 2000 the May FTD return average has been even weaker at 0.03%.

The following chart shows the returns for every May FTD since 1984.