October can be a scary month for US stocks

I noticed this many years ago – consider also 1907 and 1929. October just isn’t a good month: perhaps with the approach of winter we feel a collective urge to pocket our speculative gains of the summer and squirrel them away in a mattress, tree-trunk or whatever. Perhaps there just isn’t so much money to be made in the next six months, with much of the world effectively offline for most of December and January apart from a ritualistic shopping binge or two – fine if you’re in high-street retail, but a bit dull for the rest of us. Perhaps investors just need the invested money for shopping or a holiday somewhere warmer. Maybe markets should just call it a day on October 15 and come back in May when the weather’s nicer and we’re more-or-less back to producing things after the winter shutdown.