Do Airline Stocks Take Off Around U.S. Holidays?
Holidays put people in motion. In the days surrounding major U.S. holidays, airports become busier as travelers visit their families or take advantage of extended weekends. Financial markets themselves are known to display a holiday-related seasonality. In our previous research on the Pre-Holiday Effect in Commodities, we identified a short-term price drift in crude oil and gasoline before major U.S. holidays. Increased travel and the associated expectation of higher fuel consumption offered one possible explanation. This naturally raises another question: if holiday travel leaves a seasonal footprint in energy markets, can it also be detected in the stocks of the airlines transporting those travelers? To investigate this possibility, we analyze the performance of the U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS) around major U.S. holidays. We first examine its daily returns from ten trading days before to ten trading days after each holiday and use the resulting return profile to identify the strongest seasonal windows. We then formulate two directional JETS strategies and a JETS–USO strategy.
