by Gary Alexander
March 4, 2025
March 4th marks Mardi-Gras day in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro and a few other serious party towns.
March 4th was also our national Inauguration Day from 1789 to 1933 before the 20th Amendment moved the swearing-in ceremony to January 20th, so imagine all these Trump tornado events not happening yet…
Also, March Madness begins this week, with baseball’s Opening Day and golf’s Masters following soon.
March 4th is also the birthday of composer Antonin Vivaldi in 1678, and that is only relevant here because he composed Four Seasons, a four-movement piece (for the four seasons), divided into 12 segments (for the 12 months), beginning in spring, not winter, since the year traditionally began with the birth of life in spring, not in the icy winter, so… try to listen to Vivaldi’s spring or Mardi-Gras music while reading this!
The ancient year used to begin in March, before Julius Caesar sabotaged that great idea in 45 BC, before he got stabbed to death for a series of such bad ideas the next year. The Roman calendar began in March as the season of planting and growth, a time of optimism and hope, for the rebirth of life. Alas, his Julian calendar (named for himself, of course) brought the god Janus to the fore, starting the year with January, pushing Mars (March), the god of war, into to the third position. After that, only the Jewish calendar kept the first month (Nisan) in the spring, beginning in March, so as to calculate Passover on the 14th of Nisan.
Turning to investments, wise investors know that March and April mark the best 1-2 punch in the first half of the year, behind only the June-July surge, then November-December closing each year strongly.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
In 2025, January was robust and February was weak, according to form, so there is no reason to suspect that March and April won’t deliver some welcome gains. Here are the recent Jan (+) and Feb (-) totals:
March often welcomes warmer weather, and it closes with “window dressing” in the quarter-ending portfolio cleansing process – not unlike the spring cleaning in many households, or the cleaning out of leavened products in orthodox Jewish households before Passover. There are typically several analyst earnings revisions causing switches from yesterday’s winners to tomorrow’s hopefuls. Revenue surprises were unusually high (at 75%) during the first quarter of 2023, so we may see a bump in sales this month.
March the Fourth be With You
On March 4, 1789, Congress met for the first time, and on this date in 1793, Washington gave the shortest Inauguration speech ever (133 words), which basically said, “I’m here, let’s get this nonsense over with.”
As we move deeper into the month of March – whether into More Madness or Market Momentum – we can take some pep talks from former Presidents, recalling our nation’s “mystic chords of memory” (ala Lincoln, 1861). Many have spoken well on this date in history, in times much more divisive than today.
Let’s hear short samples from Jefferson, Lincoln, Coolidge and FDR, an alternative Rushmore quartet.
1801: After Washington retired came the partisanship which has haunted us ever since, first between federalists (Adams) and Republicans (Jefferson), but on March 4, 1801, in the first inauguration held in Washington, DC, Jefferson said, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists.”
1861-65: Some of our best Inaugural speeches have been written by the Presidents themselves, with no ghost writers. Perhaps our greatest poet in the top post was Honest Abe, who also presided over our most divided era, winning less than 40% of the popular vote against three other candidates in 1860, then facing down his own General in 1864, but he uttered his most stirring words to beg for unity in both Inaugurals:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Lincoln, March 4, 1861.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and all nations.” – Lincoln, March 4, 1865, six weeks before his death.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
1925: A century ago today, the electoral map looked almost identical to when the Civil War ended, but in his only Inaugural speech, a century ago today, Calvin Coolidge focused on the morality of tax reforms:
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
“The resources of this country are almost beyond computation. No mind can comprehend them. But the cost of our combined governments is likewise almost beyond definition. Not only those who are now making their tax returns, but those who meet the enhanced cost of existence in their monthly bills, know by hard experience what this great burden is and what it does…. They know that extravagance lengthens the hours and diminishes the rewards of their labor. I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be the more abundant.
“The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute.
“I am opposed to extremely high rates, because they produce little or no revenue, because they are bad for the country, and, finally, because they are wrong. We cannot finance the country, we cannot improve social conditions, through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon the rich. Those who suffer the most harm will be the poor. This country believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.” – Coolidge, March 4, 1925.
1933: In the final March 4 Inaugural talk, Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered his unforgettable reassurance that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” but he also announced a Bank Holiday closing banks to customer access, so we had something new to fear – a lack of access to our meager cash during a Depression.
“…Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – FDR, March 4, 1933.
And so, our 32nd President gave the 32nd and final Presidential Inauguration speech delivered on March 4th (when that date fell on a Sunday, the speech was delivered on Monday, March 5th). From 1789 to 1933, the nation was often in a sorrier state of division than we see today, but with fewer telecommunications devices to bring us a constant flow of scary news and partisan rhetoric. So…March Forth in confidence.
The post 3-4-25: March in Market History – and Some Great March 4th Inauguration Messages appeared first on Navellier.
