In my discussion of the January barometer, I noted that 2001 was an ugly year for the stock market.

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Because all these events are difficult to predict, whether the January barometer will hold up next year is a big question mark.

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The January Barometer is among the panoply of superstitions surrounding stock market history made popular by the Stock Trader's Almanac founder, Yale Hirsch.

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So if we understand that the market records an annual gain somewhere in the vicinity of 75% of the time, the January barometer becomes less useful.

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Then there is the January Barometer.

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In eleven years when the December Low was breached but the January Barometer was positive, subsequent declines were reduced to 6.0% and the years as a whole had much greater gains, averaging 8.2% versus -4.0% for years when both were negative.

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The Chicago Business Barometer for January came in at 55.6, a higher reading than analysts had forecast, according to data provider FactSet.

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According to Jeff Hirsch, whose father, Yale Hirsch, invented the barometer in 1972, the positive correlation between performance for January and the whole year has failed only seven times, including in 2009 and 2010.

FORBES: Goodbye January Effect and Other Superstitions