In recent decades, October has a reputation of being a rather eventful month.

The US market has experienced a few of the most memorable market crashes during October in the past few decades

Looking at the charts, with the market in such a long consolidation, you would think something is brewing as well.

You wouldn't be wrong, here are a few of the ghoulish events coming our way soon.

US elections

Contrary to what one of the presidential nominees mentioned, the elections are actually on the 8th of November.

Although to be honest, I do hope his supporters believe him and only go to the voting stations on the 28th. Haha

The US elections thus far have resembled more of a circus act than an election for, arguably, the most powerful position in the world.

Historically, the markets have been known to perform badly around US presidential election years.

Singapore's growth shrinks

Our economy is closely tied to global trends, if there is a slowdown in global trade, we won't be able to escape the rippling effects.

Recently we posted a growth of only 0.6% in the 3rd quarter of 2016 and this is likely to be the trend going into 2017.

Any increase in US interest rate hikes will also affect us negatively.

Rising oil prices

In previous posts, I expected at higher oil prices after a retracement to about $40. We did see $40 briefly before staging a rally back up above $50 again, I’m watching for $56 to get tested.

Although OPEC finally agreed to decrease oil production in September, we did see OPEC’s oil production actually reaching record highs.

Clearly, some work still needs to be done on who cuts how much, in order not to disrupt each other's market share.

Higher oil prices will increase costs of goods and services moving forward.

Weakening global trade coupled with rising costs doesn’t sound like a good combination does it?

US interest rate hike, December?

The US fed has been talking about raising rates twice this year, we're past the 3 quarters mark for this year and they have not yet raised the interest rates even once.

Earlier this year, there were concerns of the slowdown in the global economy, and any interest rate hike from the US would only trigger an accelerated downward spiral of trade on a global scale.

An extremely low NFP number in June caused the Fed to delay raising the rates.

Which brings us to the current situation with the US elections on the 8th of November, it is highly unlikely that the Fed would want to adjust the rates and cause another potential shock in the market during a short span of time.

Surveys indicate that 60% market participants anticipate a rate hike possibly in December.

Middle east tensions continue rising, is it a reaching a critical phase?

Just this month, missiles were actually fired at US navy ships for the first time in about 3 decades.

Thankfully no damage was done, their ship's countermeasures proved effective against the attacks. But this does highlight an escalation of tensions in the middle east.

In Singapore we are safe and far away from the chaos and terror in the middle east.

This doesn't mean there is no danger there which threatens us in some way either now or in the future.

Good trading folks!

Keep your eyes open for the pots of gold from these ghouls!

The post Halloween Ghouls Are Dropping Pots Of Gold At A Market Near You This Season! appeared first on The Systematic Trader | Trading Courses | Collin Seow.