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Max intra-year drawdown, S&P 500:

1974 Ford: ≈ -37%
1978 Carter: ≈ -14%
1982 Reagan: ≈ -17%
1986 Reagan: ≈ -9%
1990 Bush: ≈ -20%
1994 Clinton: ≈ -9%
1998 Clinton: ≈ -19%
2002 Bush: ≈ -34%
2006 Bush: ≈ -8%
2010 Obama: ≈ -16%
2014 Obama: ≈ -7%
2018 Trump: ≈ -20%
2022 Biden: ≈ -25%

2026 Warsh: ???

Thirteen mid-term years. Every one had a pullback — but so does almost every calendar year; the average intra-year drop in any year is about -14%. The real signal is depth: mid-term years average roughly -18%, and nine of these thirteen deepened into a true correction of -10% or worse. That's the edge — not that a dip happens, but that it tends to run harder and cluster in the third and fourth quarters.

There's a second cycle in play. A new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, sworn in late May and about eight weeks into the job. Markets tend to test a new chair early — they price a probability distribution, not a person, and probe until he reveals himself. It's a softer tendency than the mid-term pattern, not an iron law (there have been roughly ten chairs since the 1930s, and "an early wobble" is common for almost any starting date). But the sharpest example is the one that rhymes with now.

2018 : Powell takes the chair, Volmageddon hits within days, and after "a long way from neutral" the S&P falls ~20% into Christmas Eve. Then Powell blinked. 2019 returned over 30%. New chair, mid-term year, autumn washout, capitulation low, melt-up. That's the template worth watching

Even fear has a calendar. The VIX tends to trough in early summer and crest in September–October, and in mid-term years the crest runs higher. It sat around 15 in early July, right at the seasonal low. Last week it spiked above 18 intraday. The market has started paying attention. It hasn't yet paid the full toll.

And the shock absorbers look thin: retail cash allocations near the lows last seen in 1998, 2000, 2018 and 2021; put/call skew unusually low, meaning little hedging; heavy IPO supply draining liquidity. (Positioning reads are worth watching but move fast — treat them as color, not confirmation.)

Here's the flip side, and it's the more reliable half of the pattern. The stretch after the mid-term low is historically one of the strongest in the entire four-year cycle — the six months from November through April have averaged roughly +14%, and the market has gone on to make new highs in the large majority of cases. Bull markets rarely die of a drawdown; they die of exhaustion. The mid-term correction tends to be maintenance, not the end.

The playbook isn't heroic. Hold your quality. Keep dry powder with a shopping list attached — decided at VIX 18, executed at VIX 28. Buy fear in tranches.

None of this is a schedule. It's a pattern with a sample size in the low teens: elevated odds of an autumn air-pocket and a strong rebound behind it, not a guarantee. The tripwires that would break it: the Fed staying hawkish into a slowdown, credit spreads blowing out, earnings rolling over, or the VIX term structure inverting and staying inverted.

Greed is obvious. Fear is the edge — but so is honest math.