For four weeks, the U.S. stock market has sparked and sputtered like a campfire in light rain.
Today, pandemic-driven demand is providing fuel for the investors. The need for certain types of products and services has accelerated and innovation is creating new opportunities. Consider:

• Technology. Today, digital technologies support nearly all group interactions, which has accelerated innovation. Traditional video communications platforms are in high demand, and multi-person virtual platforms are emerging. Robotics innovations are racing ahead, too. Robotic dogs enforce social distancing in Singaporean parks, reported Accenture. Other types of robots sanitize streets and facilitate contactless delivery around the globe.
• Consumer products and services. COVID-19 increased demand for staples, cleaning, and personal hygiene products. The virus may have inspired deeper and longer-lasting changes in consumer behavior, too. Accenture reported people are favoring healthier lifestyles, consuming goods more conscientiously, and showing a preference for locally-sourced goods.
• Healthcare, drug development/delivery, and medical equipment. Last Friday, 316 COVID-19 treatments and 212 vaccines were in development around the world, reported the Milliken Institute. In some places, humans are collaborating with artificial intelligence to streamline drug discovery processes. Demand for telehealth services has increased dramatically. So has demand for personal protective equipment, reported Pankaj Singh of Plastics Today.

Throughout 2020, investors’ enthusiasm has pushed markets higher. However, concerns about a variety of issues have dampened enthusiasm in recent weeks. Last Friday, Ben Levisohn of Barron’s reported:
“In a week filled with headlines about government stimulus (or the lack thereof), Supreme Court nominations, the election, the gain in the Nasdaq…suggests that it was the fear of another COVID-19 wave that really got the market down. And for good reason. The week began with the U.K. talking about a second shutdown and ended with all of Europe facing down a second wave of infection…In the U.S., the number of cases is rising and the death toll passed 200,000 midweek…”
Many of these concerns aren’t likely to dissipate soon, and volatility is likely to continue.
Last week, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average lost value, while the Nasdaq Composite gained value

S&P 500, Dow Jones Global ex-US, Gold, Bloomberg Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends (gold does not pay a dividend) and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; and the 10-year Treasury Note is simply the yield at the close of the day on each of the historical time periods.
Sources: Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, djindexes.com, London Bullion Market Association.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. N/A means not applicable.

It’s ig nobel Time.
On September 17, the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was broadcast online. Here’s a fun fact: The 1995 Ig Nobel Ceremony was one of the first events videocast on the Internet.

The Ig Nobel Prizes “celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.” The ceremony is organized by the magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, and is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association.
This year’s winning research explored ideas that make people laugh and think. The winning research included:

• Arachnophobic Entomologists: When Two More Legs Makes a Big Difference, “for collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders, which are not insects.”
• A Chinese alligator in heliox: formant frequencies in a crocodilian, “for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air.”
• Eyebrows cue grandiose narcissism, “for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows.”
• National Income Inequality Predicts Cultural Variation in Mouth to Mouth Kissing, “for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries’ national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing.”
• Misophonia: Diagnostic Criteria for a New Psychiatric Disorder, “for diagnosing a long-unrecognized medical condition: Misophonia, the distress at hearing other people make chewing sounds.”

Anyone can learn more about why the researchers were exploring these ideas. Alternatively, 24/7 Ig Nobel lectures are available during which the winners explain their topics twice. First, they are asked to deliver complete technical descriptions in 24 seconds. Then, they try to offer clear summaries that anyone can understand in just seven words.

Think About It
“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles…with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged…tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life – it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.”
–Robert Frost, Poet, on his 80^th birthday in 1954