October is living up to its reputation as the scariest month for the stock market. After a week of wild swings, the Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 index are down for the year if you exclude dividends, or up a fraction of a percent if you include them. Despite losing almost 11 percent this month, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is still up nearly 4 percent in 2018. Fortunately, October is almost over.