Why Is Wall Street So Down on Fridays This Year?

"Thank God It's Friday" is a phrase you may not hear much on Wall Street these days.

The S&P 500’s average return on Fridays in 2025 has been a little under -0.3%, making it the worst day of the week for stocks so far this year, according to a note from Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid on Tuesday. The only other day on which the market’s average return is negative is Monday, when the S&P 500 has averaged a 0.2% decline.

Friday’s recently poor performance stands in stark contrast to past years. Between 1928 and 2024, Friday was the second-best day of the week for stocks, after Wednesday. In that period, Monday was the only day to post a negative average return.

The Risk of Weekend Headlines

The weekends, according to Reid, may be getting too risky for traders. “There does seem to have been a trend of potentially negative news coming through late in the week with the market wanting to reduce risk ahead of the weekend in case of escalation (e.g. tariffs on Mexico and Canada). Or, concerns that the weekend will bring fresh headline risk,” wrote Reid.

The weekends have delivered some particularly brutal headlines so far this year. Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek shot to the top of the Apple App Store charts on the weekend of Jan. 25-26; stocks tumbled that Monday on concerns about overspending on AI. On Friday, Jan. 31, the Trump administration said it would go through with its threat to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports; stocks slid that day and fell further Monday , even as the countries struck deals to postpone the levies.

Monday’s negative performance so far this year could reflect how weekend headlines are sticking around and creating uncertainty on Monday. But by Wednesday, the day of the week with the best average performance this year, “markets have tended to come to terms with these stories.”

Reid suggests the pre- and post-weekend dips could continue until the news out of Washington stops putting markets on edge. "In a world with lots of headline risk it's possible traders will continue to want to be lighter heading into weekends than they would be if markets were calmer," writes Reid.

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