I originally wrote this article for InvestmentNews back in 2008—forever ago, in the financial world. I want to revisit it now for a couple of reasons (and also because I’m kind of proud of it). First, I think it’s held up pretty well and is still applicable, despite all the changes since then. Second, it sets the stage for an extended conversation that’s becoming increasingly important for investors and advisors.

That conversation revolves around expectations—i.e., what are you trying to accomplish with the portfolio?—and risk. We have the standard questionnaires and measures of risk and return, but, based on my frequent conversations with advisors, I’m not sure those tools really capture the dynamics of what’s going on. We need to do better.

I’ve spoken with several reporters yesterday and today, all of whom are asking, “What is happening in the stock market?” In some respects, it is a little unreal—not that long ago, a market decline of about 1.25 percent was considered normal volatility. But given how the market has climbed almost continuously for the past several months, a decline like this has people asking questions.

Perhaps they should be. The market pause since the end of last year could be suggesting a couple of things investors ought to be aware of. If you look at performance at the end of 2013, you see a consistent run-up from October to early December, a pause while everyone worried about the Fed and the taper, and then a last burst of energy. Since then, it’s been bouncing around, but with a downward trend, exemplified by yesterday’s performance.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a fairly spirited debate in an Asset Management department meeting over the economic consequences of raising the minimum wage. Just for fun, and because I like to argue, I strongly took the pro side, contending that the positive consequences would outweigh the negative. This is not a particularly common (or popular) stance in the economics and investing community, but it turns out that you can make a good case for it.

Listen to Brad’s interview on MarketWatch, where he discusses the stock market’s behavior in the first weeks of 2014.

After all the optimism embodied in the Fed’s recent minutes, at least as I read them, the employment report this morning was a shocker. Instead of the expected 200,000 or so gain in jobs, the figure came in at 74,000, well below the lowest estimate. What the heck happened?

Reading through the December meeting minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (the group that decided to start reducing the Federal Reserve’s monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage bonds), I was very surprised. Considering the Fed has, historically, gone out of its way to be obscure, the minutes’ clarity was unusual. In the words of former chair Alan Greenspan, “I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

The Fed under Chairman Bernanke has made an effort to be more straightforward, but it still tends to focus on “one hand, other hand” discussions. Harry Truman’s search for a one-armed economist goes on.

I’ve been writing for some time about how the economy is recovering. When I write or speak about this, though, I make a point of noting that I’m talking about aggregate numbers, and that a lot of people out there are still hurting. This is and will always be the case for any economic downturn, but as we move into the recovery, it’s worthwhile to think about it in more detail, looking at the data to see if there are any patterns we can learn from. To the extent that the employment market is not efficient, everyone suffers.

The first step is to identify the groups that have been hit the hardest, and who have been the slowest to recover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mx57subjTU

Every year, I struggle with the notion of preparing an outlook—I won’t use the term forecast—for the following year. Every year, I point out, to no avail, that it would be much better to do a forecast for the previous year: better data, much more context, and certainly greater accuracy. I’ve had no more success this year than usual, so I’m preparing my outlook as you read this.

The reason I call it an outlook, rather than a forecast, is that forecast implies a level of certainty that, even in principle, simply isn’t achievable. I used the simile the other day that the Fed’s job is like trying to repair a Seiko watch based on a Timex manual, using a sledgehammer operated by a robot controlled from the next room, in the dark, and I stand by it.

As the new year begins, there’s definitely a change in the atmosphere. Not the 18 inches of snow that my snowblower very efficiently directed right into my face. Not the arctic air of the past couple of days, or even the 50-degree rainstorm of today. (If you live in New England and want the weather to change, wait 10 minutes.)

The change I’m referring to is a definite aura of hope for the economy. Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff—the economists who wrote This Time Is Different, about how financial crises are never different—have come out with a study that suggests the U.S. economic recovery is actually doing pretty well, compared with the experiences of other countries emerging from similar crises.