Year begins with 3 losing days ( History )

Since 1928, the Standard & Poor's 500 has started the year with three straight losing days eight times. 

And only once has the S&P 500 finished one of those years in the red.

In an email on Tuesday evening, Jonathan Krinsky at MKM Partners noted that not only does the S&P usually gain ground when it starts the year with three losses, but the index has performed better than its historical average in those years. 

During the eight years since 1928 that the S&P started with three-day losing streaks, the index has returned 8.36% on average. For all years since 1928, the S&P has returned 7.53% on average. 

Via Krinsky, here is what happened during each of those eight years:

• 2014: Started with three straight down days. Year ended +11.39%.
• 2005: Started with three straight down days. Year ended +3%.
• 1991: Started with six straight down days. Year ended +26.31%.
• 1985: Started with three straight down days. Year ended +26.33%.
• 1978: Started with seven straight down days. Year ended +1.06%.
• 1977: Started with three straight down days. Year ended -11.50%.
• 1968: Started with three straight down days. Year ended +7.66%.
• 1956: Started with three straight down days. Year ended +2.62%.

Last week, we noted another market factoid from Krinsky, which showed that this was the first time since 2008 that the market finished one year and started the next with losing sessions. 

That is something that happened 10 times since 1980, so it's not all that uncommon, and in seven of those 10 years the S&P gained ground. 

Of course, this makes some sense: Stock markets have spent more time going up than going down. 

So what's the rub on 1977's decline?

As Yahoo Finance's Michael Santoli noted on Twitter, 1977 is the only one of those years in which a "Star Wars" movie was released. And set for release in 2015 is the sci-fi series' latest installment, "The Force Awakens." 

On Wednesday, all major stock indexes gained more than 1%, breaking 2015's losing streak.