Wall Street kicks off historically strong month after wild October

November is here, but investors had to take some hard hits before getting to this point. The S & P 500 fell 1% in October, snapping a five-month advance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite also ended the month lower. Those declines were driven in part by uncertainty over how much the Federal Reserve will be willing to cut interest rates along with a mixed bag of corporate earnings reports. That said, there were some high points. The major averages also all hit record highs at one point or another in October. Now, Wall Street is coming into what has historically proven a strong month for stocks — which could push stocks to new heights. A CNBC analysis of FactSet data showed November has been the second-strongest month for the S & P 500 going back 10 years. The benchmark index has averaged a gain of 3.2% for the month. Going back 20 years, the S & P 500 averages a 2.2% increase in November. To be sure, investors will have to get through two major catalysts next week before moving meaningfully in any direction. First, the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday. The latest NBC News poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump locked in a dead heat. Second, the Fed is set to deliver its latest monetary policy decision on Thursday. Data from the CME Group’s FedWatch tool shows interest rate futures traders expect the central bank to cut rates by a quarter percentage point. But investors will also look for clues on what the Fed might do in December. Elsewhere on Wall Street this morning, analysts reacted to the latest quarterly earnings reports from megacaps Apple and Amazon . On Apple , Goldman Sachs’ Michael Ng said : “We believe that the market’s focus on slower product revenue growth masks the strength of the Apple ecosystem and associated revenue durability & visibility.” JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth raised his price target on Amazon to $250 , implying upside of more than 34%. “We believe Amazon is well positioned as the market leader in e-commerce and public cloud, where the secular shifts remain early — U.S. e-commerce represents ~20% of adjusted retail sales, and we estimate only ~10% of IT spend is in the cloud today,” Anmuth said.