We open a new week of stock trading on the last day of August — a month that saw multiple new all-time highs reached on the Nasdaq and S&P 500, with the Dow inching ever-closer to its 2020 breakeven point. In fact, this is shaping up to be the strongest month of August in more than 30 years.

This, amid the ongoing pandemic that continues to claim 1000 American lives per day, social tension and violence being stoked in various corners of the country, and a labor environment where we still see around a million new jobless claims filed per week.

Advancements in treatments for COVID-19 and an extremely accommodative Fed are the two reasons the market has considered itself justified in keeping equity prices elevated, and in some ways it’s hard to argue with this. After all, should a vaccine appear at or around the end of the year (and this morning, a new GlaxoSmithKline (GSK Quick QuoteGSK - Free Report) and Vir Biotech (VIR Quick QuoteVIR - Free Report) antibody drug has just entered phase 2/3 testing), or Abbott Labs’ (ABT Quick QuoteABT - Free Report) new quick $5 antigen test bring about a true sense of normalcy, what leg would market bears have to stand on?

Fed policies appear to be carved in stone at this point, suggesting the cheap money and historic low interest rate environment recently enacted is not in danger of being second-guessed until inflation levels are provably well above 2% for an extended period. This necessarily makes risk-taking the place to be to garner meaningful investment returns, which in turn hurts those looking to coddle their savings accounts. Short-term, this means higher equity valuations; longer-term, who knows?

Although this will be a big week for economic data — from Manufacturing & Services to Construction Spending and Productivity revisions, culminating in the U.S. Employment Situation report by the end of the week — today sees nothing new on this front. Markets are modestly higher at this hour, perhaps looking for direction. Then again, the trading week prior to the long Labor Day weekend is typically one of low trading volume overall.

So, while we’ll have plenty of grist for the mill for investors this week — including the ongoing saga of TikTok, which reportedly may announce a new buyer soon — today looks more like a holding pattern until we see something definitive emerge going into the first month of autumn. Bottom line, however: if you “Sold in May and went away,” you’ve got a lot of catching up to do now that you “Remembered to return in September.”