Wall Street has a superstition problem. “Octoberphobia” is the name traders give to the month’s track record of unnerving declines—the 1907 Bank Panic, 1929’s crash, 1987’s Black Monday, all etched into market lore.
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The irony? Despite the ghosts of Octobers past, the market often comes out stronger on the other side.

​This year, the fear arrives just as stocks closed out an unusually strong September, leaving investors asking whether the calendar alone can derail a bull run built on AI enthusiasm and a newly dovish Fed.

U.S. stock indices closed August with respectable gains, propelled once again by Nvidia and the AI narrative (although even as I write, the market is giving back a portion of that after the release of PCE data - more on this later).

At the same time, tariffs re-emerged as a live issue, and the Fed found itself juggling market expectations with political pressure.

The Fed’s Pivot at Jackson Hole
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For much of the year, the market has been anticipating when, and if, the Fed would begin to cut interest rates. The most significant event of the month was Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at the annual Jackson Hole symposium. Powell's tone signaled a green light for a September rate cut, sending stocks and bonds rallying. 

​Equity indexes closed the month on a high note, shrugging off headline risk and propped up by strong corporate profits, resilient consumer demand, and a tariff drama that never quite turned into disaster.

Corporate earnings, still early in the season, have surprised on the upside - particularly in Financials, where banks beat expectations on both top and bottom lines.

Economic data released in July painted a relatively resilient picture. Consumer spending remains robust and labor market data was steady, with unemployment still hovering near cycle lows.
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Inflation remains stubbornly above target. Manageable, yet no comfort for the Fed.  

If April was the faceplant and May was the bandage, then June was the stubborn attempt to jog again like nothing happened. And oddly, the market pulled it off – the S&P 500 hit fresh highs and breadth improved; for the first time in recent memory, gains didn’t just belong to seven mega-cap tech stocks and their AI dreams.
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That’s the headline. The fine print? Still kind of a mess. Policy whiplash, Middle East flare-ups, and a Fed that can’t decide if it’s data-dependent or data-exhausted.

​But the machines don't care. Stocks roared back. And in doing so, they quietly rewrote the story of 2025... for now.

Experiencing a pain in the neck? Well aside from the usual suspects (dog, spouse, neighbor), it could simply be that you’re a market watcher. From April into May, President Trump’s off-again, on-again tariff policy has caused whiplash in stock markets worldwide. Eight hundred point swings in the Dow have become commonplace with every tariff tweet and walk-back.
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In the span of a week, Trump says he’ll hit EU goods with a 50% tariff. Traders braced for impact—only to watch Trump walk it back days later following a charm offensive with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Cue a broad-based rally. Then a federal court strikes down many of his import taxes, ruling that he didn’t have the power to levy them. And then, just hours later, another court puts that ruling on hold, letting the tariffs continue - for now.

If you had – God forbid - slipped on the dog’s squeaky toy and hit your head on the way down and lapsed into a 30-day coma, you would be excused if you woke up and looked at your account balance and concluded that nothing much happened in April.
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Sure, SPY is down around -1.0%, you say. But half the strategies are green for the month and NBC’s Lester Holt is showing a video of a barefoot Marine veteran wrestling an alligator on the Nightly News.

​What you missed, however, was a…

Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war whipsawed financial markets in March, triggering an end-of-the-month sell-off on Wall Street. As I write these words, the S&P 500 has lost over 6.0% for the month and the Nasdaq is down nearly 9.0%. The Dow Industrials suffered the least, but the stalwart index of blue-chip companies is still off more than 4.0%.
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It’s been a mixed bag for the strategies, with Bond Bulls, Global Trader and The 12% Solution holding up relatively well, and the more aggressive strategies (Five Stocks, White Knuckle and American Muscle) taking it on the chin. Of note, while Five Stocks largely holds on to powerhouse names and rides out short-term storms, the Knuckles and the Muscles are positioning themselves for more trouble ahead with larger stakes in U.S. Treasuries. 

Thursday morning the market opened with promise. Nvidia, the 800-pound gorilla that has become the bellwether for all things AI, had posted earnings the night before, exceeding fourth-quarter estimates on the top and bottom lines and issuing strong guidance. Commentary ranged from “a blowout” to “a nothingburger.” Either way, investors exhaled. The stock was up 2% and change.

Then, in a post on Truth Social, the President announced that tariffs of 25% on Mexico and Canada, which had been on hold for a month (and that many thought would disappear), will take effect on March 4. Trump also said that China would face an additional 10% levy on top of 10% tariffs already in place.

And away goes the promise. Nvidia would close down 8.5% for the day with the rest of the market in hot pursuit.

The Chinese app had been flying under the radar for a few weeks, but it surfaced in a big way over the weekend of January 25-26. By Monday, it was clear this was going to be a market game-changer. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 sank 3% lead by none other than Nvidia – down 17% for the day and resulting in a market cap loss of close to $600 billion, the biggest drop ever for a U.S. company.

To put that in perspective, Nvidia’s decline is more than double the entire market cap of Coca-Cola and Chevron. In a single day, Nvidia sank from number one to the third most-valuable public company, behind Apple and Microsoft.

Even as December limped to a close - no Santa Claus rally in sight - the fervor surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) left its mark in 2024, powering significant gains in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

​Further stoking the fire: the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates on three separate occasions in the latter half of the year. Stocks also rallied sharply following Trump's win in November, as traders factored in the expectation for lower taxes and a looser regulatory approach under a Republican administration.

The S&P 500 ended 2024 with an annual gain of about 23% after rising by 24% in 2023, marking the first time since 1997 and 1998 that the index has closed with back-to-back gains of above 20%.
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Those are the headlines for the year. But there’s more to a market than headlines. Let’s get some perspective.