I have pretty much been ignoring Brexit over the past several weeks, apart from noting it as a risk factor. The reason was that there was no way to predict what could happen—and there were so many options that trying to analyze any one of them was, in the end, pointless.

What is the inversion of the yield curve really telling us? I discussed this and more on CNN International’s Quest Means Business today.

March was another great month for the financial markets, with U.S., emerging, and developed markets all up. But this strength was a bit strange, considering the weakening seen in the fundamentals. Here in the U.S., both consumer and business confidence took a hit, the yield curve inversion caused many to worry about a pending recession, and analysts lowered their expectations regarding corporate earnings.

Last week was a busy one for economic news, including looks at housing, trade, confidence, and consumer income and spending. This week is also full and should provide further insight on whether the recent spate of weak data is likely to continue.

I was thinking again about the interesting times post. I want to give another slant on it that might help people get through the interesting times that are likely ahead: to separate our Wall Street thinking from our Main Street thinking. If we keep our minds firmly on Main Street, we can ride out quite a bit of news without getting derailed. It is when we start listening to Wall Street that we can get into trouble. This may seem a bit odd, coming from me. I’m a Wall Street creature, right?

As we move to the close of the first quarter, we now have some data to think about what the rest of 2019 will hold. Let’s take a look at what we can reasonably conclude.

There is supposedly an old Chinese curse that states, “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly have been doing just that—and times look likely to get even more interesting going forward. But how do we think about investing (and living) in interesting times?

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." — Woody Allen

Do I think consumer confidence is a key economic statistic? I discussed this, the yield curve, and more today on Yahoo Finance's On the Move.

The big economic news last week was the inversion of the yield curve (i.e., when the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries dropped below the yields on shorter-term notes). This warrants—and will get, tomorrow—a more detailed discussion, but the short version of the story is that inversions can indeed signal trouble in the next six to eighteen months, but not right away. This is one more sign of weakness, and something to watch, but not a sign of imminent doom.