HigherIQ — Sunday, January 18, 2026

Good morning, it's Sunday, January 18th, 2026. Markets are closed tomorrow for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so let's use this moment to step back from the ticker and think about something bigger. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the federal MLK holiday, and this year's theme from The King Center is "Mission Possible: Building Community, Uniting a Nation the Nonviolent Way." That language feels particularly heavy given what's been happening in Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents and protesters have clashed for over a week. King's philosophy of nonviolent resistance — the sit-ins, the marches, the peaceful demonstrations — was designed to expose injustice while maintaining moral authority. Whether you see the Minneapolis protests as justified civil disobedience or dangerous disorder probably depends on your politics, but the tension between federal power and local communities is exactly the kind of conflict King spent his life navigating. One small but telling detail: The National Park Service quietly removed MLK Day from its list of free entrance days this year. California responded by offering free entry to all 200-plus state parks tomorrow. Sometimes the most revealing policy signals come from the smallest bureaucratic decisions. If you're looking for something lighter tomorrow evening, the College Football Championship kicks off at 7:30 — undefeated Indiana against Miami, playing in the Hurricanes' home stadium. Indiana's Heisman-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza has been unstoppable, and the Hoosiers haven't lost a game all season. It's also where Dos Equis will debut their "Most Interesting Man in the World" revival ad, betting that nostalgia can reverse an 8 percent sales decline. Now, let's talk about something unexpected: mechanical watches. In a world obsessed with AI, algorithms, and screens, there's a quiet countertrend happening on people's wrists. Gen Z — the generation that supposedly can't look up from their phones — has become obsessed with analog timepieces. Not smartwatches. Not fitness trackers. Mechanical watches with gears and springs and dials that require human craftsmanship to build and maintain. A 2024 YouGov survey found that 18-to-24-year-olds were almost twice as likely as any other age group to consider buying a luxury watch in the next twelve months. The secondhand watch market hit 27 billion dollars in 2023 and is projected to grow 12 percent annually for the next decade. Young collectors are driving much of that growth, hunting for Rolexes and Cartiers on platforms like Chrono24 and Watchfinder, often guided by influencers who've turned horological nerdom into a content empire. Why does this matter beyond fashion? Three reasons. First, there's an investment angle worth understanding. During the pandemic, certain luxury watches — the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, the Patek Philippe Nautilus — doubled or tripled in price on the secondary market. That bubble popped in 2022, but people who bought before the pandemic are still in the green. Today, only specific models like the Rolex Daytona trade at significant premiums due to multi-year waitlists. For anyone thinking about alternative assets, watches occupy a weird middle ground: they're portable, they hold value better than most consumer goods, but they're also subject to fashion cycles and require expertise to evaluate. If you're curious, start by understanding which models actually appreciate versus which ones just look expensive. Second, there's an entrepreneurship opportunity. Legacy brands like Rolex and Cartier charge thousands or tens of thousands for their timepieces — and Rolex just raised prices another 18 percent over the past two years. That's created space for microbrands like Baltic, Formex, and Traska to build followings with watches priced in the hundreds. These smaller companies have more freedom to experiment with design — food-themed watches, robot pinball scenes, pieces that look simultaneously vintage and futuristic. Industry analysts expect the microbrand market to grow 25 percent over the next five years. If you're building a consumer product business, the watch space offers a case study in how to compete against entrenched luxury players by zigging where they zag. Third, and this is the part that actually affects most people's lives: smartwatches are quietly becoming medical devices, and the company that cracks noninvasive blood glucose monitoring will reshape healthcare. Here's where we are. Apple added sleep apnea detection and hypertension alerts over the past year. Samsung and Google have similar health-tracking features. But none of them can measure blood sugar without a finger prick — yet. Apple has reportedly spent hundreds of millions trying to solve this problem, but according to Bloomberg, they're still "many years away." Samsung's working on it too. The device that looks best positioned to break through first is actually a breath monitor from a company called PreEvnt that impressed at CES this month and is currently in clinical trials. If someone cracks this, the implications are enormous. There are roughly 40 million Americans with diabetes who currently rely on finger pricks or adhesive patches with microneedles. A watch that could monitor glucose continuously and noninvasively would change daily life for those people and potentially disrupt an entire industry of medical device makers. For anyone in healthcare investing or building health tech products, this is the race to watch. One important caveat: the more health data these devices collect, the more privacy questions arise. There's no federal law preventing wearable tech companies from selling your health data, and HIPAA largely doesn't apply to consumer devices. Your Apple Watch knows your heart rate, your sleep patterns, your stress levels, and soon maybe your blood pressure and blood oxygen. That information has value — to insurers, to employers, to advertisers. The tradeoff between convenience and privacy is one most people haven't thought through carefully. Looking ahead to this week, the World Economic Forum kicks off tomorrow in Davos. The headline act is Trump's first in-person appearance at the conference since returning to office — he's scheduled to speak Wednesday. The gathering's theme is "A Spirit of Dialogue," which feels optimistic given that most of the discussion will center on Trump's tariff policies, his push to acquire Greenland, and his recent threat to Fed Chair Jerome Powell that had central bankers around the world worried about Fed independence. Speaking of Powell, an interesting development Friday: Trump suggested he wants to keep Kevin Hassett at the National Economic Council rather than move him to the Fed, which boosts the odds of former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh getting the chair nomination when Powell's term ends in May. Whoever gets the job will navigate a genuinely difficult tension between what Trump wants — lower rates, looser policy — and what the institution has historically demanded — independence from political pressure. Markets are watching this closely. One more thing worth flagging: the Taiwan chip deal we discussed yesterday is already having downstream effects. Chip stocks outperformed on Friday — Broadcom up two and a half percent, TSMC and AMD both climbing — even as the broader market drifted. The 250 billion dollars in committed Taiwanese investment, combined with the tariff clarity, is giving semiconductor companies something they haven't had in a while: a predictable framework for planning. TSMC is boosting its capital budget to as much as 56 billion dollars this year and accelerating its Arizona buildout. If you're invested in tech or thinking about it, this deal provides structural support for the sector that wasn't there a week ago. That's your Sunday briefing. Markets closed tomorrow, a football championship worth watching, and a reminder that even in an age of artificial intelligence, there's something about mechanical craftsmanship — gears and springs and human hands — that still captures people's imaginations. Maybe that says something about what we're looking for that algorithms can't provide. Stay curious, stay informed, and we'll see you on Monday.