A “year-end melt-up.”

That’s what Goldman’s Scott Rubner sees, although he suspects equities could be a challenging trade between now and the US election.

I’ll spare readers a summary of Scott’s tactical, near-term trading view. I don’t want to say it isn’t germane — it is — but a lot depends on what kind of investor you are, and some of it falls into the “don’t try this at home” category.

Looking past October, Rubner sees the S&P hitting 6,000 in a year-end “FOMO” trade. “I think investors will chase risk in November and December and re-allocate their portfolios out of cash and into stocks,” he said.

As a reminder that no one should need, there’s quite a bit of cash on the sidelines ostensibly available for “deployment” in risk assets, where “quite a bit” means $6.3 trillion’s parked in US money funds. The figure below shows the cumulative inflow to US MMFs in 2024. It stood at $417 billion as of last Wednesday.

Notably, the big inflow to cash hasn’t impeded flows to US equity funds, which enjoyed a net $261 billion of inflows through mid-September.

“My view is that PWMs will shift some of this cash pile into bond stocks, min-vol, high dividend equities and investment grade credit,” Rubner said, adding that “portfolio shifts from households are typically done in December.”

If you’re curious, the median return for the S&P in November and December during election years is 3.4%, according to Goldman. As the table on the left, below, shows, that’s better than the median return for all years over those two months.

The figure on the right, above, shows the median November-December return looking back to 1985. As Rubner noted in his annotations, the last two months of the year are generally the best.

His point: “Regardless of who wins the election, the typical November and December periods are above average returns for the S&P.”

For what it’s worth, December has the highest hit rate for positive returns of any month, at around 77% (see the figure below).

November likewise has a high hit rate (around 72%) and boasts the highest median return of any month.

Finally, Rubner noted that 401ks, 529s and target-date funds tend to top-up their allocations in November.

For 2025, Rubner said that in his view, “the market will trade like a bunch of RINOs,” where that’s “Recession In Name Only,” with breadth increasing and reflation themes outperforming, as laggards become leaders.