Six trading days do not make a market.

But small investors already battered last year by the biggest stock losses since the Great Depression have a new set of worries at the start of this year.

After a good first few days, stocks moved in fits and starts before closing Friday on a down note.

At the bell, the Standard & Poor’s 500 is down 2 percent for the first six days of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off 1.4 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index is down .3 percent.

Some Wall Street analysts say the early days of trading each year are significant because stock returns in January signal how the stock market will do for the rest of the year. They point out that in 60 of the last 80 years, the performance of the S&P 500 in January has accurately predicted whether stocks go up or down for the full 12 months.

They say look at last year. Stocks were off 6 percent in January. For the year, the S&P finished down 37 percent, the worst year since 1937. Anybody who watched a 401(k) shrink knows that.

So what about this year?

I’m not quite ready to jump on the bandwagon, pushed by brokers and companies trying to sell stock and mutual funds, that the market will recover strongly later this year, improving everyone’s financial health.

There’s still too much uncertainty, too many grim headlines to come. That will make the market volatile, sending stocks gyrating in huge swings of several hundred points a day.

Last Friday’s news reports that the United States lost jobs in December will be followed by more monthly declines in Rhode Island, and the rest of the country, well into the year, pushing jobless rates higher. More job cuts, or fear of getting laid off, will further tighten consumer spending, and that won’t help any recovery.

The fourth-quarter gross domestic product, a key index of the economy’s strength, will be reported on Jan. 30. The economy is forecast to have contracted at a rate of 4 percent to 6 percent and will stay negative at least through the first quarter. Fourth-quarter corporate profit reports will also be dismal.

Then there’s the slump in housing prices and the stall in construction. There’s more bad news to come there, including more foreclosures, until the market turns positive late this year — maybe.

Not all is negative.

Stocks could get a spark from President-elect Barack Obama’s plans for an $800-billion stimulus package that includes tax cuts and shovelfuls of federal money for the states. Obama takes office Jan. 20 and federal lawmakers have set a deadline of Feb. 13 to put a package on Obama’s desk. If that plan puts people to work quickly, and more importantly, breathes some confidence into consumers, the markets should get a lift. But if the bill gets bogged down with pork-barrel projects and partisan bickering, stocks will slip.

Other issues that may help the markets include gasoline prices. At $1.71 a gallon last week, they are well down from their peaks above $4. But the crisis in the Mideast, a cut in production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or any signs of a global economic recovery could push prices higher, siphoning money from people’s pockets that could have been spent on goods and services to spark the economy.

So what’s a rank-and-file investor to do?

Already, some people are pulling out. Investors yanked a record $72 billion from stock funds overall in October, according to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual-fund trade group.

At the same time, however, the ICI said the number of households owning mutual funds rose last year to 52.5 million, or 45 percent, from 50.6 million, or 43.6 percent, a year earlier. That’s because a lot of mutual-fund investing is on automatic pilot. With company pensions gone and 401(k)s the recommended way to save for retirement, many people still see the market as the place to invest to provide for the future.

But with all the volatility, and all the uncertainty, whether you and your family stay in the market is still a personal decision. If the market swings are too much to stomach, and making it hard to sleep at night, perhaps it’s not for you. There are safer options, such as Treasury bills, savings accounts and certificates of deposit. Even if the returns are small, investors won’t be losing any money.

But if you can handle the ebbs and flows in the market, and have a longer horizon for when you need the money, history shows that staying the course does reward investors. So for how long do you have to wait out this bear market?

Nobody knows. Estimates are all over the lot.

Analysts for the S&P 500 predict in their annual forecast that an economic recovery later this year would push the benchmark index up 20 percent this year. That sounds too rosy.

On the other hand, some bearish analysts say we’re in for another year of big losses. That sounds too pessimistic.

Watch the bounces in the January barometer. It will give us a clue to the next 11 months.

jkostrze@projo.com