Trick or treat? I'll take the treat, thank you very much. For the month, Dow was up 7.7% and Standard & Poor's 500 was up 8.8%, making last month it's best September since 1939. But honestly, it did come as quite a surprise as economic news last month were not any more optimistic than they were for the prior month. The U.S. manufacturing sector remained above 50 (showing expanding activity) at 54.4, however lower than its level of 56.3 in August.

Credit for last month's market performance mostly goes to Quantitative Easing II, expected to be delivered in November.  Not even Moody's downgrade of Spain's credit rating and another bailout of Anglo-Irish Bank dampened the market's spirits. QE II also drove down the dollar, which in turn, lifted Treasuries, gold and oil.

And could there be more good news around the corner? With the mid-term election coming up, Ned Davis of Ned Davis Research says "while the samples are small, we found that under a Democratic President and Republic Congress, the stock market has performed better than it has under one-sided rule."

M&A activities also continue with the latest being that of Southwest Airlines acquiring Air Trans for $1.4 billion.  Another forward looking indicator was FedEx announcing that their express delivery business was on track to achieve double-digit margins beginning next year.

Earnings reports will trickle in starting this week, with Alcoa unofficially kicking off the third-quarter earnings season.  And on Friday October 8^th, the labor department will release the monthly employment report - some say they're expected to report that nonfarm payrolls were flat last month, after a drop of 54,000 in August. We'll have to wait and see.   

For the month of September, gold was up by 4.7% and recently soared to an all-time high above $1,300, fueled by currency devaluation amongst other things. This yellow metal has appreciated nearly 30% in the past year and over 400% in the past 10 years!  Now now, I know what you're thinking; as much as it sounds like the investment of the decade, it comes with its own set of "risks", which like during most hypes (in the most recent past being real estate) are over looked and under estimated. Jeff Reeves has this article posted on www.fidelity.com and I thought it would be timely to pass it along to you.  

I've edited it for space but you can view the entire article at: https://news.fidelity.com/news/article.jhtml?guid=/FidelityNewsPage/pages/hidden-costs-of-gold&topic=investing-etfs

1. Higher Taxes: The IRS taxes precious metal investments - including gold ETFs like the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and iShares Silver Trust (SLV) - as collectibles. That means a long-term capital gains tax of 28% compared with 15% for equities (20% if and when the Bush tax cuts expire next year).
2. Zero Income: Just as the math game on gold price appreciation doesn't tell the whole story, the lack of regular payouts is another reason why the long-term profits quoted in gold are incomplete. Many long-term investors can't afford to stash their savings in the back yard for 20 years. Income is a very valuable feature of many investments and gold simply doesn't provide that.
3. Gold scams take a toll: They include false gradings on the quality of the coins, the use of cheaper alloys instead of pure gold and even brazen scams where you don't actually even own the gold that you buy. And that's just on the coins front. Scams abound in pawn shops and "cash for gold" enterprises that refuse to give you a true value for your jewelry or other gold items.
4. High ownership and storage costs: Maybe through some creative accounting or selective amnesia at tax time you can mitigate the tax burden of gold. But one expense you can't as easily avoid is the high ownership cost of gold. After all, it's not like you mined it yourself - and all those middlemen between the ore and you want to get paid.
5. Yes, gold can lose value: Consider that after reaching a record high of $850 per ounce in early 1980, gold plummeted 40% in two months. The average price for gold in 1981 fell to a mere $460 an ounce - and continued nearly unabated until bottoming with an average price of around $280 in 2000. For those folks in their 40s and 50s who bought gold at that 1980 high, it took them 28 years to reclaim the $850 level. That's hardly much of a retirement plan, unless they lived to be 80 or 90 and just cashed out recently.