Market sectors sometimes move when the political winds shift, but trading is hazardous for your financial health, our columnist says.

“Sell in May and go away,” is an old Wall Street adage. I first heard about it from my father, a New York businessman, on a hot afternoon back in the last century.

“The brokers and the people with real money are in the Hamptons now,” he shouted over the bedlam of city traffic as he drove us home in an un-air-conditioned Ford sedan. “They just shut down for the summer and relax. The rest of us, who are still working, might as well forget about the market, too, because nothing’s happening.” In an election year, he said, that was doubly true. Nobody but the pros paid close attention to politics until Labor Day.

That was the theory, anyway. Ignoring both politics and the markets is clearly not feasible this summer. If you

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