Hi Allen, Re: Seasonality and AIM...................................
Decades ago Club Med, Inc had publicly traded shares here in the U.S. Not only did they have great looking annual reports (pretty people in pretty places in their photos) the stock was a wonderful AIM holding. It truly was a Seasonal play in that the Spring Break period was boom times for the stock while Hurricane Season was usually very hard on the stock.
With resorts around the world, there was almost always a tropical storm somewhere during the fall of the year. News of a big hurricane or typhoon hitting one of their resorts always dropped the stock deeper than the usual seasonal shift. Typical yearly spread was from around $25 to around $35/share. Throw in a good storm and it would dip to as low as $15 on occasion.
If it was a particularly harsh winter, then the spring sales would jump like crazy. The stock would climb on such booking news, too. So, AIM would be selling shares from December through about June and then buying shares from around August to November. EVERY YEAR!!!! My AIM profits paid for many of our vacations at Club Med back then!
What was curious is something similar to what you were discussing. Disaster can be spelled Opportunity in some cases. If one or more of Club Med's properties were damaged by a tropical storm, then the next season it was all remodeled and became a prime destination for new visitors. If a resort was showing some wear and tear, they almost hoped a storm would come and give them a reason to remodel! Occupancy always rose for the freshly remodeled units.
So, seasonality can be yet another thing beyond business cycle to watch on some stocks. I would imagine there is good seasonality to the Cruise Ship industry, but haven't ever really checked. The heating season in the northern areas of the country offer some seasonality push to stocks servicing that necessity. Maybe there are public stocks for Sandals or some of the other destination vacations resorts.
