Friday the 13th Isn't Unlucky for Stocks: Up 54.3% vs 54.1%

The S&P 500 rose on 54.3% of its 81 Fridays the 13th since 1978 — against 54.1% for every other Friday. That 0.3-point gap is the smallest one 81 Fridays can produce, according to SignalPilotLabs, the TradingView analyst who ran the test ahead of the next such date, 13 November 2026.

Gold, checked over the same question, tells the same story. It climbed on 55.9% of its 68 Fridays the 13th and 53.9% of its 1,964 other Fridays.

SignalPilotLabs kept the framing blunt: "Leave the date out of it. On these records, a Friday the 13th rose as often as any other Friday, and it fell 1% or more a little less often."

How the test was built

The analysis used TradingView's daily closes for the S&P 500 (SP:SPX) from February 1978 to 16 October 2026, and for gold (TVC:GOLD) from March 1985 to the same date. A Friday's change is its close against the prior day; it counted as a rise when that change was above zero.

That produced 2,452 Fridays for the S&P 500, 81 of them on the 13th. For gold it produced 2,032 Fridays, 68 on the 13th.

One methodological detail stands out. The analyst wrote the question, the test and the pass bar down on 31 October — before setting a single Friday apart. That pre-registration is what separates this from the usual calendar folklore that circulates on trading desks.

What exactly did the numbers show?

The core counts are simple. The S&P 500 rose on 44 of its 81 Fridays the 13th. On its 2,371 other Fridays it rose 1,282 times, or 54.1%.

Gold's split ran 55.9% on the 13ths versus 53.9% elsewhere. Both markets showed a small positive gap for the supposedly cursed date.

Then came the randomness check. The analyst drew 81 Fridays at random from all the S&P 500's Fridays, 10,000 times. Every single draw left a gap at least as big as the real one — 0.3 points. For gold, 7,971 of the 10,000 draws did. Against the pre-set bar of luck under 5% with both halves on the same side, Friday the 13th behaved like any other Friday in both markets.

Did the pattern hold across time?

It didn't. Splitting each market's Fridays into two halves by count showed the gap flipping sides.

The S&P 500's Fridays the 13th rose 55.3% up to June 2002, then 53.5% after. Its other Fridays went the opposite way: 53.6% in the first half, 54.5% in the second. Gold reversed more sharply — 46.9% on the 13ths versus 50.9% elsewhere up to May 2006, then 63.9% against 56.8% after.

So neither market shows a stable edge. What looks like a mild blessing for the 13th in one stretch turns into a drag in another. That's the signature of noise, not signal.

What about the big down days?

Drops of 1% or more actually came less often on Fridays the 13th. The S&P 500 saw them on 8.6% of its 13ths and 11.9% of its other Fridays. For gold, the split was 8.8% against 9.7%. The analyst flagged this as a description, not a tested claim.

The record's extremes frame the range. The biggest Friday the 13th fall for the S&P 500 came on 13 October 1989, at -6.1%. The biggest rise came on 13 March 2020, at +9.3% — the pandemic rebound week. The analyst counted those two days after the test, as descriptions.

What does the 15-year chart show?

The accompanying chart tracks the S&P 500 monthly from October 2011 to September 2026, the last 180 months. Each month holding a Friday the 13th gets shaded: teal when that Friday rose, red when it fell.

Over those 15 years, 55.6% of the 27 Fridays the 13th rose. And 55.6% of the 729 other Fridays did too. Dead even, again.

What should traders take from it?

Nothing about the date itself. The superstition doesn't survive contact with the data — not in the S&P 500 since 1978, not in gold since 1985, not in the last 15 years, and not in the tail-risk column, where 1% falls were slightly rarer on the 13th.

The analysis carries honest limits, spelled out by its author. It doesn't cover other markets. It doesn't test other dates people call unlucky. It says nothing about the days after the 13th. It rests on two markets and daily closes. And it's past data. SignalPilotLabs closes with a label that fits: observations, not recommendations.

For anyone tempted to hedge or reposition ahead of 13 November 2026, the record offers no reason. The market that rose 54.1% of ordinary Fridays rose 54.3% of the unlucky ones.