Ten years of Mastercard stock history just got mapped out month by month, and one month stands alone at the top.
A Mastercard MA seasonal returns chart published on Yahoo Finance and surfaced in Google News on November 6, 2026, shows July has posted a positive return in every single year measured between 2016 and 2026, while November has also stood out as a historically strong month for the payments giant's stock.
Hong Kong Finance Sector Security Opening Up: Can Both Really Work Together?
What the Mastercard MA seasonal returns chart actually shows
The chart tracks Mastercard's average monthly price return across a ten-year window, and July comes out on top with an average gain of 5.18 percent and a perfect 100 percent win rate, meaning all eleven observed Julys ended higher. April follows with a 3.41 percent average return, and November isn't far behind at 3.93 percent, built on seven positive months against three negative ones for a 70 percent win rate.
Other months tell a messier story. August averaged 2.93 percent, January came in at 2.88 percent, and December closed out the year at 2.09 percent. Across the full ten-year stretch, the average yearly return landed at 20.71 percent, with nine up years and only one down year in the sample. That full-year number gives some sense of how strong Mastercard's long-term run has been, even though individual months swing wildly around that average.
JPMorgan Bond Index Adds Saudi Arabia and Philippines: Here's What Changes
September and May drag down the Mastercard stock monthly seasonality picture
Not every month has been kind to Mastercard shareholders. September posted the worst average return in the chart at negative 1.75 percent, and it shared a 45 percent win rate with June, meaning both months finished lower more often than half the time. March and June each averaged negative 0.61 percent, adding to a rough middle stretch of the calendar year.
May stands out for a different reason. Its average return was actually positive, at 1.14 percent, but its win rate was the lowest of any month on the chart at just 36 percent. That gap shows how a handful of unusually strong Mays can pull the average higher even while the stock falls more often than it rises during that month. March, February, and October all sat in the middle with 55 percent win rates, showing a coin-flip pattern rather than a clear trend.
Mastercard's 2026 numbers so far don't match the historical script
The 2026 calendar year gives a real-time test of whether the old pattern is holding up, and the early results are mixed. January fell 5.62 percent and February dropped 4.01 percent, both rough starts compared to their historical averages. March slipped another 3.39 percent, April edged up just 0.65 percent, and May lost 1.78 percent, again falling short of its usual positive tilt.
Then the pattern flipped. June gained 3.97 percent, July jumped 11.58 percent, well above its historical average, and August added 2.83 percent. September crashed 6.42 percent, far worse than its usual negative 1.75 percent average, before October rebounded sharply with a 15.69 percent gain. November and December figures were not yet available when Yahoo's page was last updated on November 2, 2026, so the full 2026 picture remains incomplete.
Strong earnings numbers sit behind the stock's recent swings
Behind these monthly price swings, Mastercard has been posting solid business results. The company reported third quarter 2026 net revenue of 9.8 billion dollars, up 14 percent year over year, according to its earnings release filed with the SEC on October 29, 2026. Gross dollar volume rose 7 percent and purchase volume climbed 9 percent in local currency terms, signs that consumer and business spending on Mastercard's network kept growing through the quarter.
Net income for the quarter came in at 4.6 billion dollars, with diluted earnings per share of 5.28 dollars. Adjusted net income reached 4.7 billion dollars, with adjusted diluted earnings per share of 5.31 dollars. These figures followed a strong second quarter, when Mastercard reported net revenue of 9.3 billion dollars, also up 14 percent, alongside 10 percent purchase volume growth in local currency, based on the earnings release the company filed on July 30, 2026.
Why the Mastercard stock November performance pattern deserves a skeptical read
It's tempting to treat a 100 percent win rate in July or a 70 percent win rate in November as a reliable signal, but the sample size is small. Eleven observations per month isn't enough to build a dependable trading strategy, and one or two outsized moves can skew an entire month's average. The chart itself is a historical record, not a prediction, and it says nothing about why any particular month behaved the way it did.
Mastercard's results depend on things this chart doesn't capture, including interest rate shifts, currency swings, regulatory changes, and overall consumer spending trends. With November and December 2026 still unrecorded in Yahoo's data as of the November 2 update, investors watching the Mastercard MA seasonal returns chart will need to wait for the full year to close before drawing fresh conclusions about how this year stacks up against the decade-long pattern.
