Dear John: I have more than 400 shares of Washington Mutual stock. Will it be converted to JPMorgan shares? If so, where can I research the conversion rate? J.P.

Dear J.P.: You have my sympathy.

Washington Mutual was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision on Sept. 25. JPMorgan Chase acquired the deposits, assets and certain liabilities. But the common stock, I’m afraid to say, was probably wiped out.

There is a chance, however, that someday shareholders may get something, the government says. But first, holders of subordinated debt have to be satisfied.

Dear John: I read with interest your call for the market to rally at the end of the year and that this “pattern is repeated every year.” So I looked up the numbers for the S&P 500 from Dec. 15 to Dec. 31 for the last 10 years, and was surprised that the numbers do not support your position.

Over the last 10 years, between the 15th and 31st of December, the S&P has appreciated five times, fallen four times, and finished at the same level once. The average move has been an increase of 1.23 percent, but the median move was an increase of only 0.37 percent.

While on average the market has moved up, I do not think 1.23 percent is material – especially considering the current volatility.

Also, the market moving up only five years out of 10 does not support much confidence that it would move up in any given year.

Could you explain? M.D.

Dear M.D.: First, using your numbers, why would you think a 1.23 percent increase in prices – over such a short period of time – isn’t material? If you could annualize that return – and I know you can’t – you’d be sitting pretty right now in a Caribbean resort.

And your numbers for the last 10 years might be thrown off by a horrendous performance in the late 1990s and in 2007.

According to the Stock Traders Almanac, since 1969 there has been an average 1.4 percent rally in the last five days of December into the first two days of January.

Since 2000, the performance of the S&P has been plus 5.7 percent, plus 1.8 percent, plus 1.2 percent, plus 2.4 percent, negative 1.8 percent in 2003, plus 0.4 percent in 2005 and an insignificant rally in 2006.

In 2007, however, the loss was 2.5 percent in the last week of the year, plus the first two days of 2008.

But we’ve also noticed – and I’ve written about it repeatedly – the tendency of the stock market to rally the week before options (and futures) expired. Typically one or two dramatic triple-digit gains for the Dow – like the 360 points on Dec. 16.

Usually the rally is attributed to something else in the press but the pattern is just too obvious to be anything but traders playing with their positions.

When we looked into the options-week phenomenon – which I haven’t done in a year – we noticed there was a triple-digit Dow gain, like the Dec. 16 one, 58 percent of the time. In non-option weeks these gains were recorded only 29 percent of the time.

Granted, volatility has increased since last year and big gains (but mostly big losses) are more commonplace. But, as we saw on Dec. 16, stocks still tend to rally sometime during options weeks. And a gain like the 4.2 percent on Dec. 16 is nothing to sniff about – in fact, you could have been invested that one day and done better than most professional did this entire year.

This time the gain in the last three weeks of 2008 was over 5 percent. And since the start of the year stock prices have fallen.

The market’s biggest problem: it can’t hold gains when they do occur.

Send your questions to Dear John, The N.Y. Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y., N.Y., 10036, or john.crudele@nypost.com.