I just came across a discussion about the 'Sell in May' strategy applied to crypto, which made me think a bit. What exactly is this strategy?

There’s an old English proverb from the 17th century called 'Sell in May and go away, and come on back on St. Leger's Day.' Basically, it recommends that investors sell stocks at the beginning of May and only return to the market around the end of the year. The initial reason is quite interesting — English aristocrats and bankers wanted to leave the hot city of London to enjoy horse racing events in the countryside during summer.

By the 20th century, this strategy gradually became widely used in the U.S. stock market. According to Forbes statistics, from 1950 to 2013, the Dow Jones index showed an average return of only 0.3% from May to October, while the period from November to April increased by an average of 7.5%. This number sounds attractive, but when Barron’s conducted a deeper study over the past 30 years, they found that the additional profit from applying 'Sell in May' was only about 0.7% per year compared to regular investors — and that’s before taxes and trading costs.

But here’s the interesting part. When I consider applying this strategy to the crypto market, the results are completely different. Based on data from the past 13 years, there are 7 months of gains and 6 months of losses — meaning about 54% of May months are up compared to 46% down. This figure shows that 'Sell in May' is unlikely to work effectively in the crypto market.

That’s an important lesson I want to emphasize. Not every strategy from one market can be directly transferred and applied to another. You can’t just take a stock or Forex trading strategy and mechanically apply it to crypto. Each market has its own characteristics. The basic knowledge might be similar, but the way you implement it needs to be flexible and suited to the nature of each exchange. That’s what I’ve learned from following this market.