Nic Puckrin, the co-founder and CEO of crypto information portal Coin Bureau, thinks selling one’s bitcoins (BTC) in May would be more profitable than offloading the assets in September.

According to his tweet, the cumulative returns of disposing of one’s cryptocurrencies in May have surpassed selling in September or any other time of the year by over 1000%.

Sell in May and Go Away

Puckrin explained that the phrase “Sell in May, Go Away” is from the traditional finance space and refers to the effect of seasonality. The adage dates back centuries and postulates that the best six months of the year for stocks are recorded from November through April, suggesting that investors should sell in May and wait until October to buy again.

The saying may apply to the crypto sector because in the past five years, buying BTC in October and selling in April has accrued cumulative returns of 1,449% compared to buying in May and selling in September, which had a negative return of -29%.

Puckrin cited a report by cryptocurrency research firm K33 to substantiate his claims, insisting that other studies have shown similar results for the same strategy. Hence, the Coin Bureau CEO believes crypto investors would have realized more profits if they sold their assets last month, especially after BTC rallied to $73,700 for the first time in mid-March and traded around $70,000 for the remainder of the month.

Market Sentiment is Cooling

On-chain indicators and macroeconomic conditions suggest it may be too late for investors to sell their assets now, seeing that May has gotten off to a bad start and market sentiment has started cooling.

The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index shows retail sentiment is waning as it is in neutral territory. Puckrin said Bitcoin search trends have declined, and X is full of doom posts.

Institutions also appear to be less bullish on crypto investment products, as seen in the U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) market witnessing steady outflows for the past five consecutive trading days. Even the newly-launched ETFs in Hong Kong are seeing much lower inflows than analysts predicted.

In addition, Puckrin disclosed that perpetual funding rates have declined substantially, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures open interest held by non-ETF funds have fallen to their lowest since October 2023.

Meanwhile, BTC has fallen more than 22% from its all-time high and was changing hands at $57,100 at the time of writing.