Once spooky Oct. serves up Wall St. treat

NEW YORK — October, a month with spooky connotations on Wall Street is proving it isn't as scary as its reputation.

As the month nears its end, stocks are poised to deliver a profit-filled sweet surprise to investors, who don't seem scared off by market history: crashes in 1929 and 1987 shortly before Halloween.

The Standard & Poor's 500, up 5.4% this month, is on track for itsbest monthly gain since October 2011. Tuesday's 1771.95 close marked the 33rd record close of 2013, the most since 1999, says S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The S&P 500 is up 24.2% this year, on pace for its best annual gain since 1995.

Of course, Halloween isn't until Thursday, and the Federal Reserve could still throw a fright into the market if it emerges from its meeting Wednesday and announces a monetary tightening move. Absent such a shock, no one seems afraid of buying stocks.

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Tech stocks are enjoying a renaissance that harks back to 1999, as investors bid up shares of hot names like Google and social media darlings like LinkedIn and Yelp. They're also salivating over next week's initial public offering of Twitter, the micro-blogging site best known for its 140-character "tweets." Blue chip stocks are flying high, too, as are small stocks.

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Wall Street headed into the month worried about an array of risks. They ranged from political gridlock in Washington and the threat of a fresh fiscal crisis, to ongoing worries about the pace of corporate earnings and concerns that the Fed would soon turn off its stimulus spigot that has powered stocks higher for years.

A government shutdown did occur, lasting 16 days. But the nation didn't default on its debt, which was the market's biggest fear. The Fed's decision last month not to cut back on its bond-buying program to boost the economy also turned a possible headwind! into a tailwind. And corporate earnings for the July-through-September quarter are coming in at a growth rate of 4.9%, vs. an estimate of 3.4% on Oct. 1.

Stocks now enter what historically has been their best six-month stretch. November is the Dow's second-best performing month in the past 20 years.

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If the increasingly frothy market is to keep chugging higher, it will need to start going up on more than just the cheap money flooding the market from the Fed and global central bankers, says Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial.

"The market needs to climb on the backs of better earnings reports and better economic data," Krosby says. "We want to see more evidence of growth and a pick up in consumer confidence."

Edward Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, says his biggest fear is "that we have nothing to fear but the notion that there is nothing to fear." A continued market "melt-up," Yardeni says, would make him more "worried about a market meltdown."