This will be a short post as I am on a plane headed back home from Florida. For me, this brief time in the air is a great opportunity to do something I try to do a couple of times a year here on the blog: focus on gratitude. Gratitude is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your life. Doing a daily gratitude practice, where I write down three things I am grateful for every day, has changed my life immeasurably for the better. Gratitude is not usually associated with air travel, I admit, but let’s see what we can do here.

With the market recovery continuing and after the decline at the end of last year, the market is once again moving close to new highs. The multibillion dollar question here is why that is—which hopefully will give us some guidance as to whether it will continue.

Last week was a busy one for economic data. But the week ahead will be slower, consisting of housing reports and the regular meeting of the Fed.

To follow up on my most recent Economic Risk Factor Update and Monthly Market Risk Update, as well as on my colleague Anu’s post on whether the Fed might resort to negative rates, I want to think about where the economy is headed. As I pointed out in the risk updates, the headline news is positive. All the economic indicators that I follow are outside the risk zones, market risk indicators have improved over the past month, and, in general, things are good. At least markets certainly think so. But as I look beyond the headline data, there is a strong case to be made that the current good conditions are much more fragile than they seem.

Brad here. With the Fed widely perceived as having hit pause on rate increases, with the European Central Bank launching stimulus again, and with rates declining around the world (back into negative territory, in many cases), it is time to start thinking about what the Fed might do in the next recession. Anu Gaggar of our Research department put some relevant ideas together that we should be considering as we contemplate the next couple of years. Thanks, Anu!

Market risks come in three flavors: recession risk, economic shock risk, and risks within the market itself. So, what do these risks look like for March? Let’s take a closer look at the numbers.

After signs of weakness in January, the question was whether we would see a rebound in February. In some areas—consumer and business confidence—we did, largely driven by the end of the government shutdown. This confidence rebound has reduced risk going forward, although we need to pay attention to whether it holds.

Last week was a busy one in terms of economic updates, including the very important jobs report. This week, we’ll get a look at retail sales and manufacturing.

There’s no getting around it: the jobs report, with only 20,000 jobs added last month across the entire U.S., stinks. This is a terrible report, and it should strike fear and loathing into the hearts of every economist and citizen in the country. This opinion is the bulk of what I suspect you will be hearing, and it is largely correct.

Yesterday, I wrote about how we’re approaching the 10th anniversary of the market bottom, when the S&P 500 touched 666 and then started to rebound. Today, I want to talk about a different market milestone: March 10, 2000 (19 years ago this weekend). That’s when the Nasdaq Composite, the tech index that exemplified the dot-com boom, peaked and started to decline.