September is September. It just drives investors and Wall Street crazy.
Everyone comes back from summer vacation, happy, maybe even relaxed. And then the stock market basically says, “Don’t get cocky.”
September sure happened last week, and the unease is growing.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 4.3% on the week, its worst weekly loss since a 4.7% decline in September 2022. The Nasdaq Composite Index slumped 5.77%, its worst weekly loss since January 17, 2022.
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The concern is two-fold:
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The U.S. economy seems to be slowing.
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Traders, investors, and money managers around the world are waiting for the Federal Reserve to make a decision on interest rates. That won’t come for another week.
So, September gets to play, well, September. Between 2014 and 2023, stocks have fallen in September seven times. The month has been the worst month for stocks overall since 1950, according to the Stock Traders Almanac.
But declines for the S&P 500 and the Dow since stocks peaked this summer have been modest: 4.6% since the S&P intraday peak of 5,669.67 on July 16 and just 3% since the Dow peaked at 41,585.21 on Aug. 30.
The Nasdaq and Nasdaq-100 indexes, dominated by tech and big tech, are a different story:
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The Nasdaq is off 10.6% since hitting a 52-week high of 18,671.07 in July. A 10% decline from a top is popular definition of a correction.
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The Nasdaq-100’s decline from its July peak is nearly 11%.
The declines should not surprise. Both indexes were seriously overbought in early July and increasingly vulnerable to short-sellers. Nvidia (NVDA) has fallen 27.3% since peaking at $140.76 on June 20.
The calendar ahead is light on earnings — Oracle (ORCL) , due Monday, is probably the biggest report. The week also offers two important reports that can produce volatility: the Consumer Price Index report on Wednesday and the Producer Price Index on Thursday.
It’s the Fed meeting on Sept. 17-18 everyone in markets is waiting for. The betting is the central bank will cut its key rate from 5.25%-to-5.5% to 5% to 2.5%, with more cuts to follow.
Apple will unveil new and upgraded iPhones
But there is one event that could get traders excited: Apple’s (AAPL) big product announcement event, known as “It’s Glowtime” on Monday.
The event, which starts at 1 p.m. ET, will be focused on the iPhone, its biggest source of revenue.
The event is expected to feature at least some new iPhone models, updates to the Apple Watch and perhaps some intelligence on Apple Intelligence, the company’s effort to work artificial intelligence into its products.
Apple shares are up 14.7% in 2024, third among the Magnificent 7 stocks after Nvidia, up 107.7% and Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) , up 41.3%.
But Apple was also, relatively speaking, the best Mag 7 performer on Friday, down just 0.7% on the day. It was the second Mag 7 stock on the week, down 3.6%, behind Tesla (TSLA) , down 1.6%.
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