Wednesday afternoon the Federal Open Market Committee will release its latest monetary policy statement. For comparison, the March statement is posted on FederalReserve.gov. If you must engage in the act of combing through each word, it's always best to have the prior release in front of you when the new one hits the wires.

Hugh Johnson, chairman and CIO at HJ Advisors, says investors are safe in assuming that there aren't going to be any seismic shifts in policy. "It's going to be pretty much the same statement," Johnson says in the attached video.

Ticking through the old favorites, Johnson says he's looking for commentary on low rates, unemployment, slow growth, etc. "You can parse all you want but basically that's what it's going to tell you," he states.

The exception is whether or not the list of dissenters to current policy expands beyond Esther George. It's the behind the scenes debate regarding the timing of tapering the quantitative easing programs that Johnson is paying

Had you adhered to the old adage "sell in May and go away" for the past three years, you would have not only avoided a lot pain, but you would have likely outperformed the benchmarks, as well. This as the springs of 2010, 2011 and 2012 each marked the starting point for sell-offs that would shave anywhere from 9% to 19% off of the S&P 500 (^GSPC) in just a matter of months.

In the case of Jeff Hirsch, the editor-in-chief at the Stock Trader's Almanac, it's not just about going away from the stock market, he says investors need to have a strategy that will carry them through until the fall.

"When you come around to the end of the best six months, e.g. April, and the market is up as it is, we start to get defensive," Hirsch says in the attached video. By putting what he calls "the prevent-D on the field," he implements a host of portfolio changes, such as tightening up stop-loss levels to bring them closer to the appreciated value of assets; limiting the new purchase of positions; undergoing simple profit-taking in winners and culling losers; and looking for possible short ideas and some asset shifting into bonds.

Historically, since the 1950s, Hirsch says the longer-term "sell in May" results are also compelling, but never more so than in the past three years. In 2010, for example, the high watermark set in late April did not get permanently eclipsed until December — and then, only by about 3%. In 2011, the high of the year was hit on May 2 after the S&P 500 had gained 9%. But over the next five months, stocks fell 20% and would ultimately finish the year flat, which was still 8% below where they were eight months before. And then again, in 2012, a searing hot first quarter saw a high set in April, followed by a sell-off and five unproductive months while the market got back to even.