Next Monday will be the first trading day (FTD) of March.

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.

However, since 1984 the FTSE 100 Index has on average fallen 0.05% on the March FTD, making it the weakest FTD of any month in the year.

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