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It was another stomach-churning day on Wall Street. At one point, the Dow industrials were down 460 points — a huge drop that followed four consecutive days of stock market losses.

The decline more than wiped out the year's gains. But then late in the trading day, tocks started to recover. And by the close, the Dow's loss was a little more than 1 percent.

Investors are worried about a global economic slowdown, the Federal Reserve's next move and even the Ebola virus.

October has sometimes been a catastrophic month for the stock market, and though this month isn't that bad yet it sometimes felt Wednesday like disaster was lurking.

Stock prices plunged sharply in the morning, came back a bit and then fell again. At one point Wednesday, the Standard and Poor's 500 was down nearly 3 percent. That came after several days of steep losses, but the index recovered some of its lost ground by the end of the day.

"Given that we've seen volatility spike up to levels that we haven't seen since the fall of 2011, I would consider that there's a bit of fear out there right now and that's something we haven't seen for a very long time," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Schwab.

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Frederick says investors are growing more and more worried about how much the economy has slowed in Asia and Europe. He says Germany, for instance, largely escaped the consequences of the last downturn in 2011.

"But we've seen recent significant declines in German GDP, we've seen sharp drops in German business and investor confidence and we see really the European Central Bank kind of in a position where they are talking of doing things but they can't seem to come to a decision on exactly what they are going to do and I think some people are beginning to question if they have any true ammunition left to combat this," Frederick said.

Compared with Europe, the U.S. economy continues to grow at a pretty good pace. But a string of bad economic data Wednesday left a lot of investors questioning how long it will keep doing so. Retail sales plunged more than expected in September.

And then there's the Ebola virus. In addition to all the other bad things it would do, an outbreak of the disease in this country could wreak havoc on U.S. trade and investment.

"All these things are kind of hitting at one time and people are now saying, 'I want to reduce my risk exposure very, very quickly,' " said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research.

With all these fears mounting, investors did what they have so often done: They pulled their money out of riskier investments and into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds. And that drove interest rates down sharply.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, says investors may be overreacting.

"The fact that the 10-year yield broke 2 percent again in a U.S. economy that arguably is in the best shape and fastest-growing that it's been in the entire recovery — I think that's a real disconnect," he said.

But for now investors seem to be swamped by fears. One other looming concern is where the Federal Reserve is likely to go in the months ahead.

As the U.S. economy has improved, Fed officials have gradually made clear that an interest rate increase is somewhere on the horizon. That's not likely to happen anytime soon, but it's enough to add to the market's jitters at a time when there are already plenty of things to worry about.

At any big-box store, you can find the annual holiday mash-up now on garish display: Halloween costumes are stacked next to the decorative turkey napkins and pre-lit Christmas trees.

It's time to celebrate the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Hanukkah-Christmas-New-Year season!

This year, most merchants are optimistic, predicting strong sales throughout the peak shopping period. Let's start with Halloween, with its sales of costumes, candy, cards and pumpkins. This year, the National Retail Federation predicts Halloween revenues will hit $7.4 billion, up from last year's $6.9 billion.

Decorations will drive much of that spending, up to $2 billion, the trade group says. A generation ago, Dad might carve a pumpkin into a jack-o'-lantern, and that was that. Today, front yards are filled with electronic bubbling cauldrons, animated jumping spiders and talking witches.

Another positive factor for retailers is that Oct. 31 falls on a Friday, which allows for more Halloween parties. And this is good news for party-throwers: Candy will cost, at most, just a few pennies more than last year.

"Halloween candy price inflation has slowed tremendously over the past couple of years, thanks to depressed raw sugar and refined sugar beet prices," IHS Global Insight U.S. economist Chris Christopher said in his analysis of the holiday.

Icing on your pumpkin cake: It will be cheaper to drive to those Halloween parties because gasoline prices have dropped dramatically in recent weeks to around $3 a gallon.

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Need one more reason for optimism? Congress is not in session. "Last year's federal government shutdown in the first half of October put a damper on consumer mood in the run-up to Halloween, and more importantly to the holiday retail sales season," Christopher said.

And that's what merchants are really looking for: signs that a good Halloween will lead to an even stronger holiday season. The retail group is predicting a robust increase in spending in the year's final two months.

The NRF's annual Consumer Spending Survey found the average person celebrating Christmas, Kwanzaa and/or Hanukkah will spend $804.42 this year, up nearly 5 percent over last year's actual $767.27.

"Overall, consumers feel better about where they stand compared to a year ago, and as such could find themselves stretching their dollars to give their loved ones a holiday season to remember," Prosper's principal analyst Pam Goodfellow said in a statement.

That prediction feels right to Antoine Kent, who was visiting New York City and shopping for a ninja costume for his godson. He believes the economy is strengthening enough to allow for more spending through the holidays.

"It seems like it's getting a little better each year," Kent said.

For the moment, he only needs to focus on Halloween because his 8-year-old godson was clear: "He said, 'Find me a ninja.' "

In case you are wondering: Yahoo says this year's most searched-for Halloween costumes include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Frozen princesses.

By Christmas, most shopping lists will shift to electronics. Analysts are predicting the hottest gifts will include iPhones, digital fitness products and video games.

NPR Business Desk intern Robert Szypko contributed to this report.

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This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

Millennials are spending — and giving away their cash — a lot differently than previous generations, and that's changing the game for giving, and for the charities that depend on it.

Scott Harrison's group, Charity: Water, is a prime example. Harrison's story starts in New York's hottest nightclubs, promoting the proverbial "models and bottles."

"At 28 years old, I realized my legacy was going to be just that. Here lies a guy who got people wasted," Harrison says.

So he changed his story. Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink.

Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary.

"They all said, 'I don't trust charities. I don't give. I believe these charities are just these black holes. I don't even know how much money would actually go to the people who I'm trying to help,' " Harrison recalls.

So his one cause became two: He started Charity: Water to dig wells to bring clean drinking water to the nearly 800 million people without access to it around the globe. But he also wanted to set an example with the way the organization did its work.

"We're also really trying to reinvent charity, reinvent the way people think about giving, the way that they give," he says.

“ That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now.

- Amy Webb

Demographic change is a huge reason for rethinking this. With around 80 million millennials coming of age, knowing how they spend their cash on causes is going to be critical for nonprofits. And their spending patterns aren't the same as their parents.

"Our culture is changing pretty dramatically," says Amy Webb, who forecasts digital trends for nonprofit and for-profit companies. "That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now."

One piece of advice she gives on appealing to younger donors? Don't even ask them to "donate," because younger donors want to feel more invested in a cause. Choose a different word, with a different connotation: investment.

"It may seem something simple. It's just semantics: donation vs. investment. But I think to a millennial, who's grown up in a very different world, one that's more participatory because of the digital tools that we have, to them they want to feel like they're making an investment. Not just that they're investing their capital, but they're investing emotionally," Webb says.

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The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water. Elise Hu/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Elise Hu/NPR

The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water.

Elise Hu/NPR

And there's the tech part. She says any philanthropy without a smart digital platform — not just for donations but for empowering a community of givers — will be left behind.

Which brings us back to Charity: Water. Designers spend most their time finding ways to save their donors time, trimming as much lag time or obstacles to giving online as possible.

"There are a lot of people who are more willing to be generous with 20, 30 and 50 dollars, but their time is actually worth something. And the thought of pulling out their credit card and fighting through a two- and three- and four-page form is just too much," Harrison says.

On its site, giving is as simple as a couple of clicks. And Charity: Water's big tactical success, the approach for which it's earned notoriety, is getting young people to call on their own real-life social networks for help. It's the same approach that made this summer's Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS so unavoidable.

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"We're always taking selfies, we're sharing details about our lives. So why not do a little social narcissism for a good cause," Beth Kanter, author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, told NPR in August.

Charity: Water stokes that by building campaigns around birthdays.

"One of the big ideas that the millennials embraced," Harrison says, "is this idea that we sorta stumbled into, when we asked people to give up their birthday for clean water. So I went around asking everyone I knew to give $32 for my 32nd birthday."

Soon, tech CEOs were raising tens of thousands of dollars per campaign by giving up their birthdays for water. This spring, NFL safety Kam Chancellor joined in. And the generation that comes after millennials — the children today — are getting into it, too.

"We had 7-year-olds in Austin, Texas, go door to door asking for $7 donations. We had 16-year-olds in Indiana asking for $16 donations," Harrison says.

The group's focus on social networks and simple design means 4 million more people, in 22 countries, now have access to clean drinking water.

But you don't have to take our word for it. Charity: Water's latest tech improvement is putting remote sensors on wells — so donors can see just how much water flows from what they helped build.

"We think this is just going to be game changing," Harrison says.

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All around the country, gasoline prices have been falling for weeks, down to an average of about $3 a gallon. Those lower prices are helping restrain inflation across the board.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department said its consumer price index barely inched up 0.1 percent last month. Over the past 12 months, the CPI has risen by 1.7 percent, roughly half of its historical average rate of increase.

That sounds great for consumers.

But some economists see possible trouble ahead. They worry that if energy prices were to keep sliding, the process could contribute to deflation — a brutal cycle of falling prices last seen in this country during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Economists consider deflation to be the nightmare scenario. To understand why, imagine you own a factory. To make your product, you first must purchase parts and raw materials. You promise workers a certain wage. You borrow money to expand.

All of these transactions are based on the idea that you will be able to sell your goods at a particular price. But what if prices start falling?

Suddenly, you can't afford to repay your loan or live up to your contract with workers. You can't afford the parts that already are sitting on your inventory shelves. You have to start selling products at a loss, even as your competitors are slashing their prices.

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The downward pressure creates a vicious cycle that quickly leads to a broad plunge in the value of businesses, homes and other investments. While inflation can be painful and corrosive over time, deflation can crush an economy like a boulder out of the sky.

So where is the downward price pressure coming from today? Look overseas.

In both Europe and China, growth is weak. When consumers and companies in other countries start cutting their purchases of energy and goods, then global prices fall.

All over the world, central bankers and policymakers are trying to stimulate growth to keep prices from falling further. In this country, the Federal Reserve, which sets the direction of interest rates, wants to see the inflation rate hold steady at 2 percent.

"Given the deflationary winds blowing our way from Europe, the Fed is going to want to see CPI much higher" before boosting interest rates, Jonathan Lewis, the top investment officer at Samson Capital Advisors, said in an analysis.

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@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country. @officialdavet/Instagram hide caption

itoggle caption @officialdavet/Instagram

@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country.

@officialdavet/Instagram

For most Americans, here's what all of this means: Wages and prices are not moving much, and interest rates are remaining low. There may be a danger of deflation lurking just over the horizon, but so far, the drop in energy prices has been a boost for consumers.

Many are applauding the pleasures of low inflation. For example, they can buy a car with a cheap loan and then fill it up with cheap gas. That can help stimulate the economy in this country by increasing travel and consumer purchasing power.

"I'm on a very tight budget," said Macy Gould, a Lexington, Ky., resident who graduated from college in May. She was thrilled this past weekend when she was able to refuel for about $2.83 a gallon. "Spending less on gas is a real help to me," she said.

Earlier this year, a driving trip she wanted to make to St. Louis "just wasn't doable," she said. Now that the cost of gas is down so much, "I'm hoping I can get that back on the calendar."

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