September is nearly over. With the stock market near record highs, investors may want to consider ways to position their portfolios during this historically tricky month.

October represents the start of the fourth quarter. The month of Halloween can also be a difficult one for stocks. Historically, it is the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s most volatile month. Coincidence or not, it has also been the setting for some of the market’s most dramatic crashes, like those in 1929 and 1987.

Given that stock prices and price-to-earnings ratios remain at historic highs, investors may want to be ready for the unexpected.

While stock prices look richly valued, there is good news, too. Earnings also look solid, says BofA Global Securities in a note on Monday. The firm forecasts S&P 500 earnings per share to grow by 11% in 2025 and 10% in 2026.

There is one wrinkle. BofA Securities is less bullish on the market’s largest tech names, such as the Magnificent Seven, and instead sees growth broadening into other parts of the market. That is potentially bad news for S&P 500 index funds, which are weighted by market capitalization and therefore have heavy exposure to those names.

“Megacaps are slowing,” writes BofA Securities strategist Savita Subramanian. “Expect booming, broadening EPS but less stellar index returns.”

There are workarounds for investors. One is to own a fund that weights all components in the S&P 500 equally, rather than tilting toward larger names. A popular example is the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight exchange-traded fund.

Another way to position your portfolio for October is by looking at what has fared the best historically. Research firm CFRA notes that going back to 1995, the S&P 500 has returned 5.2% in the last three months of the year, better than any other quarter.

The top-performing sectors include industrials (6.1% return in the fourth quarter), financials (6%), and materials (5.8%). All three are sectors that stand to benefit from the Fed’s expected interest-rate cuts, especially if the economy remains strong.

One reason those three sectors benefit from rate cuts is that they are cyclical, which means they perform their best when economic conditions improve. That makes cyclicals tricky to use as insurance against an unexpected October market swoon. It is possible that a market correction would be set off by investors worried about overvalued tech stocks and not concerns about the broader economy—but it isn’t something you would want to count on.

If safety is your overarching goal, a better bet may be to simply buy portfolio insurance in the form of options. Fortunately, that looks relatively cheap right now.

While October may be the month of the unexpected, Wall Street is currently counting on calm. The CBOE Volatility Index, the market’s futures-based “fear gauge” commonly called the Vix, stands at just 15.3, notes DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas in a note Monday. That is wellbelow its overall historical average of 19.5.

As a result, put options, which allow investors to put a floor on their potential market losses, are relatively cheap. The cost of insuring an S&P 500-tracking stock portfolio against a 10% decline between now and Dec. 19 is just 0.9% of the portfolio’s value, according to DataTrek’s calculations.

While Colas says he’s still bullish on the market, he adds: “For readers who are genuinely worried about the months ahead, listed equity options offer a reasonable, low-cost hedge.”