Economic growth came in well below expectations this morning, at 0.1 percent instead of the 1.2 percent generally expected. Ouch. Is this something we should be worrying about?

I’m at the airport on my way to the Commonwealth President’s Club conference, so this will be a brief post. As I’ve written many times before, I love these conferences for a bunch of reasons—the venues, the events, and, most of all, the people.

You can spend all day, every day, looking at and analyzing the plethora of economic and market data. I know, because that’s pretty much what I do. What you find after a while, though, is that much of this information is either redundant or meaningless (or apt to be revised so much that it might as well be).

Consumer confidence will play an increasingly important role in supporting stock prices as earnings show signs of rolling over.

Today’s post is inspired by Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, a series of woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Hokusai that depicts the same scene from various perspectives, yielding very different images. Data can be viewed the same way, with various angles giving different impressions and potentially leading to very distinct conclusions.

The headline for this morning is that new home sales are down more than 14 percent on a month-to-month basis. This comes in tandem with drops in mortgage applications and a much smaller drop, of less than 1 percent, in existing home sales. With rates up, and demand potentially declining as institutional buyers pull back, is it time to worry that the housing recovery is over?

A caveat about this post: I haven’t yet read the book, so this is neither a review nor a real engagement with Piketty’s arguments. I’ll get to that—I just ordered the Kindle version, and have a couple of very long plane rides coming up, which should be ideal.

I’ll be honest with you; I don’t have a lot to talk about today as far as economics and the market go. The recovery continues, markets are back in the trading range of the past six weeks or so, and there simply is not a lot to write about today.

My son, Jackson, is almost six, and we are starting to have conversations about what Daddy does for work. Since he is also at the age where we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about good guys versus bad guys—particularly in the context of Star Wars—this also tends to bleed over into other areas. So, of course, it got me thinking about where we, as an industry, stand.

This is the last installment in our series on rising interest rates. Here, we’ll cover what everyone really wants to know: What do rising rates mean for our investments?

Yesterday, we discussed what the natural rate of interest should be, arriving at about 5 percent on a nominal basis, assuming 2-percent inflation. That seems like a reasonable number over time, given that the Federal Reserve has committed to an inflation target of 2 percent. But with interest rates currently at much less than 3 percent, there’s clearly a gap between what the rate should be and where it is now.

Check out Brad’s April 10 interview on CNBC's Closing Bell.

I admit I was waiting to see what the markets did before I wrote this post, but now that things seem to be bouncing back, we can move away from worries about stocks and back to worries about bonds. All worries, all the time—that’s the Eeyore channel! (For those who don’t know, I’ve been called Eeyore occasionally because of what some perceived as a dour outlook. I’ve certainly been more cheerful recently, at least about the economy.)

For some reason, we are experiencing a new wave of doom and gloom. In the past week, I’ve been forwarded several e-mails rehashing end-of-the-world stories, including an invitation to watch a video entitled Meltdown America. When I was interviewed on TV yesterday, the clear theme of the questions was whether this was it, the big crash.

Summer is coming, finally, and we have a nice day outside. Of course, summer means amusement parks and, as Jackson gets older, Dad taking him on rides. I miss the days of the rocket ships that went in gentle circles—now we are moving on to the teacups and the roller coasters that make you regret that hot dog you ate very much.

I’m back in the office today with no overarching story, but a lot of items worth a look.

I’m headed back from a brief vacation today. My family and I were at the Commonwealth Winners Circle conference, then ventured down south of Tucson to stay with Jackson’s Gram and Pop-pop. It’s been a fun couple of days—I particularly recommend the Desert Museum—but today will be spent on planes. That’s the plan.

Friday was a scary day in the markets, as pretty good economic news was met with a downturn in stock prices. The S&P 500 dropped 1.25 percent, and the Nasdaq dropped a scarier 2.6 percent.

The data is coming in, and it appears it was the weather after all. The jobs report showed a gain of 192,000 (slightly below expectations but still quite healthy), the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.7 percent (which is actually better than it looks), and private employment hit a new all-time high—all very good signs for the future.

I’m at the Commonwealth Winners Circle conference this week, talking with our financial advisors and having a wonderful time. The Arizona weather is a huge improvement on that of many parts of the country, which is lightening everyone’s mood. Even as we enjoy the better weather, though, one of the questions that keeps coming up is whether the current positive trends in many areas will continue, or change, and how will we know? Is the better economic weather transitory, or is spring really on its way?

I got a good question from Matt Parsons about yesterday’s post—essentially, what does high-frequency trading (HFT) mean to the average investor? If you’re retired, living off your investments, do you need to worry? This is an excellent question—thanks, Matt!

The New York Times has an excerpt from Michael Lewis’s new book, Flash Boys, which is essentially about how the stock markets have become rigged. There will be a tremendous amount of debate on whether his charges are fair, what actions should be taken, and so forth—the FBI has apparently already launched an investigation—but to my mind, this somewhat misses the point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kHSyp0-o0