Scary October kicks off fourth quarter

By Dian Vujovich

It’s not just ghosts and goblins twirling around Halloween that can scare us, the reality of a year-end rally to clean up the market mess from the previous three quarters of 2015 isn’t likely. But instead of fretting, remember.

Here’s the deal: Even though stocks rallied during the last couple days of September, don’t start cheering. Given the economy in the U.S. ,those around the world coupled with world events, it will take more than a few happy up days and a history of fourth quarter returns– that have had a tendency to be positive– to bring the indices up by this year’s end.

Keeping all of that in mind, here’s where the year-to-date performances of the three major indices stand today, October 1, 2015: At 10:27 this morning, the year-to-date- performance for the DJIA was down 6.94 percent, the S&P 500 down 5.4 6 something percent, and NASDAQ off 2.03, according to Bloomberg.com.

Crawling out from under those numbers might be a piece of cake if, as I pointed out earlier, things were more positive at home and abroad. But they aren’t. So, best to prepare for a down year.

And that’s not a bad thing. It’s an expected thing. Why? Because going up and down is what prices on stocks have done since people began trading stocks and that action will continue until people stop buying and selling securities.

That means, instead of boo-hooing about today’s market, don’t forget how last year rewarded you and be grateful. In 2014, the S&P 500 ended the year up 13.68 percent, NASDAQ up 13.4 percent and the DJIA up 7.53 percent, according to Dealbook.com.