In the U.S., the month of September is associated with a lot of things, including the start of school and, perhaps more important, football season. It's also known for being a particularly brutal month for the stock market.

But maybe not this year. As of Friday, U.S. stocks were on track to finish higher in September for the first time in five years, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

This represents a notable divergence from a well-established historical trend. September has a reliable track record for being the worst stretch of the calendar year for the market. In fact, Dow Jones data going back nearly a century show the S&P 500 SPX0.28%

 has seen an average September return of minus 1.2%, while other major indexes have seen similarly dismal results, as the chart below shows.

Stocks poised to avoid another September 'bloodbath'

These losses have been particularly acute in recent years, helping to burnish September's fearsome reputation. The S&P 500 fell nearly 5% in September 2023 and more than 9% in September 2022, according to FactSet data. Selloffs in 2021 and 2020 were also far larger than the average.

"It really has been a bloodbath," Ross Mayfield, an investment strategist with Baird, told MarketWatch on Friday when discussing how stocks have fared over the past four Septembers.

But investors appear to be setting the past aside this year, as the Federal Reserve's jumbo 50-basis-point interest-rate cut has helped revive their faith in the economy, noted Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments.