I do not have a proven or standard way of spotting window dressing. As far as I know, there have been no proven case of window dressing by the U.S Securities & Futures Commision even thought there has been speculation that it exist. It can be very hard, even impossible to prove unless one hero fund manager openly admits it.

I get the view from:
1) The rally occured at the end of the month, near to the Thanksgiving holidays
2) The Christmas and New Year holidays are coming as well. Fund managers will go on leave as well. If you are a fund manger, would you rather have a portfolio with stocks that have performed better or worse to end the year?
3) This is been a hard year for fund managers. The reason for window dressing is that fund managers derive their fees from the Assets Under Management (AUM). In this bear market, the managers have to present a better looking portfolio to just maintain their AUM, let alone increasing it
4) the rally occurred very late after the announcement of the Citibank rescue. Asia and Europe did not move initially.
5) The rally happened even thought the economic numbers were disappointing
6) My view that maybe the economy is going to be real bad, worse than what the analysts have predicted

I do not advocate market timing.

We like this post where you mentioned that this bear rally may be due to window dressing and also may be due to festive season.

Would like to hear your views on how we can spot window dressing by Fund Managers.Our team is analysing fund managers in Singapore now and its quite tough..frankly, not much information given, even in their prospectus on their holdings. All they show is top 10 majjor holdings.

Also, how does the festive season result in a rally?

Cheers
SGDividends Team No 1