October Doesn’t Disappoint: Volatility Is Back After A Tranquil Third Quarter

According to the 2018 edition of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, October has been a “great” time to buy. Once ranked last in terms of stock performance, the 10th month has delivered relatively average returns since 1950. What makes it so attractive is that it’s followed by November and December, historically among the very best months for stocks. We’re also entering the three most bullish quarters of the four-year presidential cycle, based on 120 years of stock market data.

At the same time, October is sometimes known as the “jinx month” because an inordinate number of huge selloffs have occurred in the month, including those in 1929 and 1987. The worst month of the global financial meltdown was October 2008, when stocks gave up close to 17 percent.

There have been only six trading days in S&P 500 Index history in which stocks sold off by eight or more standard deviations, according to a report last week by Goldman Sachs. Last Wednesday was one of those six days, the fifth largest in history, following trading days in September 1955, October 1989, October 1987 and February 2007. The selloff in 1955, interestingly enough, was prompted by news that President Dwight Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack.

If you’ve read my whitepaper “Managing Expectations,” you should know that eight standard deviations (or more) represents a massive, exceedingly rare variance from the mean. Days like last Wednesday remind us of the importance of diversification into assets that have little to no correlation with stocks—assets such as municipal bonds and gold.

Gold Helped Investors Stanch the Losses

I was impressed with how well gold did last week. The yellow metal behaved exactly as you would expect it to, edging up slightly on safe haven demand Wednesday as stocks—large and small, domestic and foreign—tumbled.

On Thursday, the spread between gold and equities was even more pronounced, with gold closing almost 3 percent higher and the S&P 500 ending down more than 2 percent, below its 200-day moving average.