Dreamforce Kick Off

Sep 11, 2023

Salesforce (CRM) kicks off its annual Dreamforce Conference tomorrow. Honing in on the buzzword of the year, AI innovation will be front and center with CEO March Benioff’s keynote scheduled to focus on the company’s usage of AI in its customer relationship management (CRM) platform.  Leading up to the conference, Salesforce has been one of the top performing Tech stocks in the S&P 500, rallying 69% year to date.  Historically, CRM has often risen in the six months ahead of the conference and has also risen more often than not in the short-term leading up to the start of the event. Once the Dreamforce Conference begins, CRM has historically averaged a 1.24% gain over the three-to-four-day span with positive returns a little over half the time. From there, CRM usually gives up some of its gains one week later, but the following months are once again positive, although it’s worth pointing out that the stock has traded lower in the three months after Dreamforce in each of the last three years.

Compared to the Tech sector, using the S&P 500 Tech ETF (XLK) as a proxy, performance in the lead up to the conference over the past twenty years has usually been positive. In fact, returns in the six months leading up to the conference have been positive 80% of the time. Unlike CRM, when the conference is underway, the Tech sector has fallen more than half the time with an average drop of 0.15%. The weakness has also been prevalent one week after the conference with an average drop of 0.65%. However, that weakness tended to be short-lived with gains on an average basis one, three, and six months after the conclusion of the conference.