Headlines were unfazed by the dog days of summer as Beijing clamped down on domestic firms, the Fed signaled that tapering is on the horizon, and inflation remained strong. All the while, a hurricane made landfall and a twenty-year war came to a chaotic end. Nonetheless, equity markets, unperturbed, continued to march upward; after all, stocks can perform well in an inflationary environment. If the market learned anything from this month, it was that COVID is not yet over, and consumer sentiment is shaky.