“Uptober” did not show up this year. Bitcoin lost about 7.3% in October 2026, according to Yahoo Finance’s monthly BTC-USD closes (83,554 at the end of September to 77,435 at the end of October), only the fourth October decline since 2014. Traders now ask the obvious follow-up: does a red October tell you anything about November? We tested it on 145 monthly returns, from October 2014 to October 2026. The short version is that three cases are too few to conclude anything, that the larger sample shows a weak tendency for weakness to follow weakness, and that the evidence in both directions is thinner than the confident videos suggest.
The three comparable Octobers
Only 2014, 2018 and 2025 combine a down October with a following November in our data (2026 is the case in progress). They do not agree with each other.
| Year | October return | November return | What it looked like |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | −12.6% | +11.7% | Rebound after a post-Mt. Gox bear-market drop |
| 2018 | −4.6% | −36.4% | Sell-off that led to the December 2018 low |
| 2025 | −3.9% | −17.5% | Second leg lower after an October liquidation event |
| Mean of three | −7.0% | −14.1% | n = 3: not a statistic, an anecdote |
Two of three Novembers were down by more than 17%, and the mean is −14.1%, but one case went the other way by 11.7%. With three observations, a single outlier can set the average, so we do not draw a rule from this. The 2018 and 2025 cases share a feature, a larger downtrend already under way, that 2014 also had, so the table cannot separate “down October” from “bear market”. The descriptions in the last column are our summary from memory of those periods and were not re-verified for this article.
What every November looks like
Across 12 Novembers from 2014 to 2025, bitcoin rose in seven and fell in five, with a mean return of +7.5% and a median of +7.6%. The range is wide: +58.2% in 2017 down to −36.4% in 2018. The standard deviation of those 12 November returns is about 28 percentage points, so even the unconditional November “seasonality” is small next to its own spread: a 7.5% average with a 28-point swing is not a pattern you can lean on in any single year.
| Group (monthly returns, Oct 2014–Oct 2026) | Months | Up | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All months | 145 | 81 (55.9%) | +5.6% | +3.1% |
| Month after an up month | 81 | 47 (58.0%) | +8.2% | +5.4% |
| Month after a down month | 63 | 34 (54.0%) | +2.7% | +2.6% |
| Month after a fall of 5% or more | 46 | 26 (56.5%) | +3.8% | +2.9% |
| Novembers only (2014–2025) | 12 | 7 (58.3%) | +7.5% | +7.6% |
Video: Benjamin Cowen’s Q4 2026 outlook, published 8 October 2026, before the October decline. It is an analyst’s view, not evidence for our figures.
A weak case for “weakness follows weakness”
The more informative number comes from the full sample. After a down month, the next month was positive 54% of the time with a mean of +2.7%; after an up month it was positive 58% of the time with a mean of +8.2%. The medians are closer, +2.6% versus +5.4%. To judge whether a gap in means of that size could be chance, we randomly drew 63 monthly returns from all 144 consecutive pairs 20,000 times and counted how often the mean was as low as +2.7%. It happened in 5.3% of draws, a borderline result: suggestive, not conclusive. We looked at several slices of the same data in this article (all down months, down months of 5% or more, Novembers), so a result near the 5% line should be read with that in mind.
Three caveats matter. First, bitcoin’s long-run drift has been strongly positive, and up months cluster in the bull phases that produced the largest gains, so “after an up month” partly measures “during a bull market”. Second, monthly returns overlap with the same price trends, so the 145 observations are not independent. Third, a few outliers can drive each mean. We therefore re-ran the comparison after dropping the single best and single worst following month from each group: the averages became +2.6% after a down month and +7.9% after an up month, so the gap survives that trim. The largest single month after an up month was +69.6%, and the weakest after a down month was −37.8%, which shows how much of the spread sits in a handful of observations.
Where November stands now
At the time of writing, November is about +0.8% on Yahoo’s partial monthly bar (78,085 against October’s close of 77,435), and Coinbase’s spot price was 78,106.83 at about 07:08 UTC on Monday. The calendar is dense. US midterm elections are on Tuesday, with Democrats widely predicted to win the House and the Senate more uncertain, and the October jobs report is due on Friday, according to Reuters (Reuters via Kitco, 30 October). We examined election windows in our midterm study and large equity drawdowns in our Nasdaq study; both found wide dispersion and weak averages, consistent with this article.
What the evidence supports, and what it does not
- Supported: after a down month, bitcoin’s next month has on average been weaker than after an up month in this 12-year sample (mean +2.7% vs +8.2%), at a borderline significance level.
- Supported: November has been up in 7 of 12 years, with an average well inside the noise of its own range.
- Not supported: any rule that a down October “means” a down November. Two of three comparable cases fell, one rose, and the cases are confounded with bear markets.
- Not tested: whether the effect survives adjusting for volatility regime, a split between bull and bear phases, or applying to other assets; and exchange-specific shocks such as this week’s Binance hack are not separated from the monthly pattern.
For a reader deciding what to do with this, the practical reading is modest. A monthly pattern with a borderline significance level and a spread of tens of percentage points cannot size a position or time an entry; it can, at most, remind you that after a weak month the odds were only slightly better than a coin flip (54% up), and that the average gain was smaller than usual. Position size, time horizon and the ability to sit through a 30% drawdown matter far more than whether October was green, and none of that is something this data can tell you.
We will add the November 2026 outcome to the three-case table after the month closes on 30 November, and report whether the result changes any of the numbers above.
Sources: Yahoo Finance BTC-USD monthly closes (own calculation); Reuters via Kitco, 30 October 2026.
Method: bitcoin prices, highs, lows and closes are Coinbase Exchange candles (UTC day) and the Coinbase spot ticker pulled by Bitcoin Mastery at about 07:08 UTC on Monday 2 November 2026; the 2 November candle is still open at that time, so the latest price is the 78,106.83 ticker and the last completed daily close is Sunday 1 November (78,230.55). Long-history bitcoin figures are Yahoo Finance BTC-USD monthly closes. Third-party figures are attributed to their source and date. Monthly returns are close-to-close from Yahoo Finance’s BTC-USD monthly series, October 2014 to October 2026 (145 returns, UTC calendar months). The permutation test draws 63 returns at random from the 144 consecutive-month pairs (20,000 draws, fixed seed) and counts means at or below the observed +2.7%. The trimmed comparison drops the single highest and lowest following-month return in each group. Figures are rounded to one decimal; the 2026 November bar is partial.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are volatile and you can lose some or all of the money you put in. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin, any exchange-traded fund, any listed security or any other asset, and the technical levels, probabilities and scenarios discussed are descriptions of published data, not forecasts. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.