Sept numbers suggest volatile month ahead

With movements among assets highly correlated at the moment,this has even greater implications than normal for currencies,government bonds and corporate debt,as well as for stocks.

The correlation between developed market stocks and the Japanese yen/Australian dollar,for example,has been above 0.8 during the latest three months,roughly meaning that every time stocks rise or fall so does the Aussie against the yen and vice-versa.

Over the past 30 years,the MSCI World index of developed stocks has lost an average of 0.9 in September,compared with a loss of 0.2 in June and gains in every other month. April is the best,up 2.5.

Burrowing further down into the data shows that September has actually been an up month slightly more than half the time,or in 17 out of 30 years.

But its average has been dragged down by at least seven black Septembers,with losses ranging from 4 to 12.

Some of these have been specifically event-driven9/11,the collapse of Lehman Brothers and so on. Analysts note,however,that September is also the month when investors reassess their portfolios after the northern hemisphere summer break.

8220;People do come back and realise that things are worse than when they went away in the summer,or have not improved,8221; said Andrew Clare,professor of asset management at Cass Business School in London.

With the US economy struggling more than it was a few months agoa condition corroborated by the Federal Reserve itselfthis does not bode well for risk in the coming month.