To say that September is a bad month for stocks is putting it lightly. Actually, “it is widely viewed as a rotten month for stocks,” according to Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni, and for good reason. Since 1945, the S&P 500 has dropped 0.73% on average in September. That’s compared with an average monthly gain of 0.7% for the index across all months over the same period.
The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott went a step further earlier this month, reminding readers that the coming of autumn has coincided with such financial disasters as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the Great Depression–era demise of the gold standard, even the mother of all financial crashes: the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720.
