Investors who believe in selling in May and going away tell the rest of us that November is a good month to buy stocks. And – in fairness – they have the weight of history on their side.
My own view is that trying to work out the best time of year to buy shares is a bad plan. But I do think there are opportunities in the stock market that are worth considering right now.
Sell in May… and buy in November?
At the start of May, Fresnillo shares were trading at £10.02. Fast forward to today and the share price is £22.72 – 127% higher than it was six months ago.
There aren’t many guarantees when it comes to the stock market. But one of the few things investors can count on is that it’s not better to buy things at higher prices than lower ones.
Fresnillo is the top-performing FTSE 100 stock of the last six months. The index as a whole, however, is up almost 17%, so share prices are generally higher now than they were then.
Investors who decided to stay in cash since May haven’t been able to make up that difference. And this shows why waiting for share prices to fall is a risky business.
A different strategy
That doesn’t mean investors should always be piling into stocks without regard for prices or fundamentals. Over the long term, that’s a risky business.
The best strategy, in my view, involves buying shares on a regular basis and looking for the best opportunities at any particular time. And this can change from one month to another.
For example, Mondelēz International (NASDAQ:MDLZ) stock has fared badly recently. But I think it might be a good time to look at buying shares in the company behind Cadbury, Oreos, and Toblerone.
The firm has been battling increased input costs in the form of cocoa and sugar prices and this is a key reason the stock has faltered. But there are signs that things are turning around.
Commodity prices
Since the start of 2025, cocoa prices have fallen by 50% and sugar has reached its lowest level in five years. That should give Mondelēz a boost in terms of its future margins.
Source: Trading Economics
This isn’t the only challenge facing the company – the rise of GLP-1 drugs is a potential threat to demand. And this is another reason the stock has underperformed over the last few years.
Mondelēz, however, has a strategy for dealing with this. Rather than changing recipes, it’s looking to reduce the size of its products to make them accessible to users of the drug.
The stock market seems suspicious, but with only 25% of the firm’s sales coming from the US, CEO Dirk van de Put thinks the likely hit to sales is around 1.5% by 2030. And that’s not a lot.
Finding investment opportunities
I think there’s a good case to be made for Mondelēz as a stock to consider buying right now. But that has pretty much nothing to do with the fact it’s November.
What it comes down to is the fact the company’s share price hasn’t really moved despite some big declines in its input costs. That’s why I think there’s a potential opportunity to check out.
