The first half of the year comes to a close Friday, and it certainly has been a strong period for stocks.
Year-to-date gains through Thursday: the Dow was up 7.7 percent, the S&P 500 is up 8 percent and the standout Nasdaq has soared over 14 percent.
Over the past two decades, stocks have generally been positive in the second half of the year, pushed higher by the performance in the large-cap tech stocks, according to CNBC’s analytics partner Kensho.
The Nasdaq 100 topped the list, trading higher three-quarters of the time, gaining an average of 6 percent in the final six months of the year.
The Nasdaq Composite and Dow each traded positively 70 percent of the time, with average gains of 4.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.
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