I have been wrestling with what to write about today. There’s not much to add that is new. The economy is doing well, and the data is coming in strong. Although the stock market is reacting to events in Washington, it is still within 1 percent of its all-time highs. From my beat, there is not a lot worth commenting on at the moment.

Yesterday, I spent some time talking with my accountant, Dave, about the implications of the new tax bill as we understand it so far. The discussion focused on planning charitable giving, but I found the context of the pending tax bill to be illuminating beyond that. He made some excellent points about what really matters to most taxpayers that I thought were worth sharing. So, here we go. (Thanks, Dave!)

Last week gave us a detailed look at both how consumers are feeling and what they are doing, as well as the sentiment levels of manufacturing companies. Overall, the news was quite good. It matched or beat expectations across the board—suggesting that the recovery continues and may well accelerate.

November proved to be another month of good news for the markets. U.S. financial markets were up across the board, and developed markets rose substantially. Hiring continued to do well, personal income grew, and consumer confidence rose to the highest level in 17 years. Plus, business confidence improved more than expected, and business spending was up.

Well, the Dow has hit another milestone: 24K. Should we cue the fireworks, cheering, champagne bottles, and so forth? Since it is the fifth time this year that a 1,000-point milestone has happened, perhaps we want to take a step back first. Anything that happens five times in a year is hardly uncommon—and perhaps not worth getting all that excited about.

All of the coverage on bitcoin has centered on its radical appreciation this year. But I believe something is getting lost in the discussion. While much has been said about the price of bitcoin, there has been little mentioned of its value. What I mean by this is that the value of bitcoin, at this point, is purely speculative. People are buying it in the hope that it will become an asset class of its own or just because it has risen so much—not because of what it is intrinsically worth.

As I have been saying, things are pretty good, economically speaking, as we approach the end of the year. At the same time, there are some significant risks in the next couple of weeks that we need to keep an eye on.

As we approach the end of 2017, I have been thinking a lot about 2018. Right now, there is quite a bit of good news out there. Hiring continues to be strong, people are earning and spending more, business investment is finally picking up, and the rest of the world economies have started growing again. And, of course, stock markets around the world have done very, very well in 2017.

With the Thanksgiving holiday, last week was a relatively slow and short one in terms of economic data. Let’s jump right in.

One of the major issues in the financial world is active versus passive investment management. The terms themselves are a bit of inside baseball, but it might help to think of them like this: Active managers say they are smart enough to beat the market and try to do so. Passive managers, on the other hand, say no one can beat the market and so just own it.