The darkest hour is just before dawn

After two and a half years of bludgeoning, it's worth noting that the 12.3% decline in the S&P 500 in September was the fifth worst for the index since 1950 - and that most of the prior terrible minus -10s were followed by substantial gains.

Here is a table of all the other months with sub -10% returns.

And now here is what the next six months looked like for the four most similar periods, listed in reverse chronological order. The state of the economy is most similar to 1990 and 1974, so bulls can legitimately hold out hope that the recoveries from such a sharp slump will be similar to their powerful moves as well.

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