Good morning, investors. Despite all the up and down headlines, the stock market just wrapped up its fifth positive month in a row.
Between the volatility and the bearish sentiment it doesn’t feel like a winning streak, but let this be your reminder that we are indeed still in a bull market.
September is the only month that stocks turn negative dating back to 1975.
Over the last five decades, the S&P 500 has averaged a 0.8% loss in the month with just a 45% win rate. Every other month in that period has seen positive returns and at least a 55% win rate.
That seasonality gets worse if you shrink the time horizon. Since 1990, August and September both averaged negative returns.
That same pattern holds since 2010, but the negative returns for each of the two months improve slightly.
Yet in more ways than one 2026 has already unfolded in a singular manner.
With the AI trade still humming along, stocks so far are outperforming both the typical midterm election year and non-midterm year.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 — alongside the Dow and Nasdaq Composite — ignored history last month and finished August with a 2.4% gain, marking its best August rally since 2021.
Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for Carson Group, made the case for a higher September in a recent note:
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The S&P 500 has gained more than 2% in each of the last 2 Septembers
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When stocks entered September up more than 10% after a positive August, the rest of the year was higher of 10 out of 11 times
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The 3 worst Septembers all came when the S&P 500 was already down for the year
Today investors get their first shot at bucking history for the month.
A message from Harbor Capital Advisors:
We talk about the AI race all the time in this newsletter, and everyone has a different take on whether OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta or even SpaceXAI is in the lead.
These ETFs allow you to invest in the ecosystem behind the AI Lab you believe in most.
🛢 Trump promised his new Venezuela oil deal will “fill up” the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But Venezuela produces heavy sour crude that the Energy Department has concluded cannot be cost-effectively stored in the SPR, which sits at a 43-year low near 286.6 million barrels. (Yahoo Finance)
🍎 Tim Cook stepped down as Apple CEO after 15 years at the helm. In a heartfelt memo to staff, Cook credited the team for helping Apple “leave our dent in the universe.” (Yahoo Finance)
🚀 Eli Lilly agreed to buy Merida Biosciences for up to $2.88 billion in cash. The deal adds MER511, a Phase 1 antibody-degrading therapy for Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease, to Lilly’s autoimmune pipeline and is expected to close in the fourth quarter. (PR Newswire)
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Trump said “let data reign” and stop opposing AI data centers or risk losing to China (Yahoo Finance)
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PG&E plunged 17% after California lawmakers failed to pass wildfire liability reform (Barron’s)
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The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon over alleged “secret ad surcharge scheme” across over a million brands (TechCrunch)
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Bernstein estimates SpaceX would need to spend $50-130 billion to build its own mobile network (Yahoo Finance)
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Marvell beat and raised expectations but still trades a third below its record high (ProCap Insights)
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Kevin Warsh talks tougher on inflation than the Fed acts (Opening Bell Daily)
🗓 September 1, 1923: The Great Kanto earthquake leveled Tokyo and Yokohama, wiping out roughly a third of Japan’s insured wealth and forcing the Bank of Japan into the first modern central-bank crisis intervention.
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*Visit harborcapital.com for a prospectus containing investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other important information. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Risks include principal loss and artificial intelligence-related risks. Harbor ETFs are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC.
Harbor is not affiliated with Opening Bell Media, and the funds are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any AI lab.
