For stocks, a few weeks without cataclysm. Now, can it last?

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The stock market has been a relatively unexciting place in the last few weeks.

Hey, that’s the good news, after the horror of September, October and November.

Wall Street closed up modestly today in a shortened session, with few investors around to care. The Dow Jones industrial average added 48.99 points, or 0.6%, to 8,468.48. Broader indexes also advanced.

To those who put credence in the importance of a ‘Santa Claus rally,’ the gains today were welcome: A popular market maxim has it that stocks are more likely to have a down new year if prices fail to rally in the last five trading days of the old year and the first two trading days of the new one.

The Stock Trader’s Almanac long has used this jingle about the Santa Claus rally: ‘If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall.’

Santa didn’t show up last year -- the Standard & Poor’s 500 slumped 2.5% from Dec. 24 through Jan. 3 -- and we all know what followed.

But reviewing the Almanac’s historical data, this is one Wall Street theory that is very hit-or-miss in results.

It didn’t pan out after hefty year-end losses in 1990 and 2004, for example; the market rose in 1991 and 2005. And in 2000, a 5.7% S&P 500 year-end rally would have suckered you in for the second year of that period’s bear market.

Santa aside, some analysts are heartened that the market has held up as well as it has, and for as long as it has, after bouncing from its multiyear lows in November.

The S&P 500 is up 15.4% since its Nov. 20 nadir, although it has pulled back 4.9% since Dec. 16.

Among other market gauges, the Russell 2,000 small-stock index is up 22.1% since Nov. 20.

‘We’re in a lot better spot than a month ago,’ said Ryan Larson, senior trader at Voyageur Asset Management in Chicago. In particular, he notes, ‘Volatility is easing, which is a good sign.’ Daily moves of 5% or more (up or down) in the S&P 500 were routine in October and November; there have been just two this month.

What’s more, the VIX, or Volatility Index, is projecting smaller market swings ahead. The index, which tracks activity in stock put and call options to gauge investors’ expectations of big moves ahead, closed at 44.21 today, its lowest since Oct. 1 and down 45% from its all-time closing high of 80.86 on Nov. 20.

Enough is enough? With many stocks now cut in half from their bull market peaks, investors already are discounting a dire recession.

So if sellers swarm again with the turn of the calendar page to 2009, the implication will be that ‘dire’ is too weak a term for what Wall Street fears is ahead for the economy.

But let’s not think about that right now. Happy holidays.

-- Tom Petruno