January Barometer? Check out these quirky market indicators

Investors are a superstitious bunch, so it should come as no surprise that Wall Street pays attention to a variety of hallowed indicators to gauge how stocks will perform in any given year. Let's take a look at some of the most-watched indicators.

The January Barometer: "As January goes, so goes the year" is probably the most-often-cited indicator. Over the Dow's 100-plus-year history, January performance has been an accurate predictor of annual performance about 65 percent of the time. Investors also watch the performance of small cap stocks during the month. If they outperform, that is also good news.

The Super Bowl Indicator: Look for an NFC win if you are long stocks. The most recent data I found was published in 2009. NFC wins resulted in the Dow rising an average of 12.3 percent; an AFC win produced negative returns of 4.8 percent. The Super Bowl indicator has produced reliable results in more than 75 percent of the instances measured.

Not convinced? For the fashion conscious, The Hemline Index was introduced by economist George Taylor in 1926. Taylor posited that as the hemlines on women's dresses rose, so did stock prices.

Coined by Leonard Lauder of Estee Lauder fame, the Lipstick Indicator ostensibly reflects the mood of consumers. When shoppers feel uncertain about the future, they indulge in less-expensive luxuries like lipstick. Rising lipstick sales are, therefore, a bearish indicator. Lauder noticed a surge in lipstick sales in the market downturn after the terrorist attacks in 2001. In economically challenged 2008, The New York Times reported that cosmetic sales rose 40 percent during the final months of 2008. A potential leading indicator to be sure.

Hocus-pocus, you say? It is difficult to argue with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Model Indicator. Here is an almost reliably empirical signal, according to Wall Street lore. If the swimsuit cover model is from the U.S. — well, hold on, stocks are going to have a fantastic year. The average return from 1979 to 2008, under those conditions, was 13.9 percent.

When all else fails, we can consider the historical facts. To do so we'll return to a favorite source, Wharton School finance professor and author Jeremy Siegel. Since 1871 — the earliest year Siegel considers the data reliable — stocks have not experienced one rolling 15-year holding period of negative returns. The same is true of both 20- and 30-year periods.

For shorter time frames, stocks have produced negative returns over 10 years only 4 out of 134 periods measured and 16 out of 139 for rolling five-year periods. While the most recent five-year annualized return for stocks is 15.8 percent (ranking in the top quartile of historical stock performance), the 10-year results are below median, arguing that there may be some more room for this bull to run.

For next week: Send me your financial planning questions for Jared Roskelley, president of Jackson Financial Advisors.

Nancy Tengler spent two decades as a professional investor. She is a financial-news commentator and university professor and the author of "The Women's Guide to Successful Investing." Reach her at nancy.tengler@cox.net