Today is a big day on the current events front, so much so that I’ve seen it referred to as “Super Thursday.” We have the British election; the meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB), which will determine the course of monetary policy; and, closer to home, the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey. I've spent a lot of time recently discussing these events, both individually and collectively, and what they could mean for the U.S. economy and markets. On reflection, they provide a good example of how investors spend quite a bit of time focusing on things that do not really matter—and ignore things that do. But more on that later.

I have revamped the monthly market risk update this month to incorporate a wider range of factors and, I hope, a more useful presentation style. My economic risk factor update seems to have wide appeal, so I am going to use the same traffic light system here, as well as incorporate some economic metrics outside the market.

The data for May was mixed. The weak areas—in employment and interest rates—suggest that we might be approaching the end of the recovery cycle. On the other hand, both consumer and business confidence remained high in May, suggesting that the end is likely to be a ways away. Although the data bears monitoring, all of our measures remain in green-light territory, supported by the strength in April’s reports.

Last week’s data was mixed, with some strong areas offset by areas of weakness. Looking at the big picture, growth is likely to continue and even accelerate over the next couple of quarters. Still, the economy is starting to hit its limits, particularly in employment.

May was a good month, with financial markets around the world rising and strong gains in the U.S. Still, we’ve had political and economic concerns, with the first quarter of the year being quite slow. But the data in May suggests this slowdown was temporary: Jobs came back, consumer spending was up, and consumer confidence remained high. We also saw growth in business investment.

Now that conference season is done, over the next week or so, I plan to share some of the thoughts I have been passing along to Commonwealth’s advisors. I will start today with the title of the presentation I gave at a number of conferences this spring—“1999 v2.0?”—and explain why I chose it.

Spring conference season is over. I’m back at the office and happy to be here. Rather than relaxing, however, I am now wrestling with my next big project: preparing an outlook for the second half of the year. What will happen? And why?

Based on the headlines, last week’s data was disappointing. But the details were more positive, leaving conditions pretty much as expected. In addition, despite the weak current results, previous months generally turned out better than initially reported and were revised upwards. Plus, long-term trends remain positive. So, while not a great month overall, it was better than it first looked for these data points.

One of the stories that has moved back into public view is bitcoin. With recent price spikes, interest in bitcoin has spiked as well, as investors try to get in on what looks like the latest hot thing. In fact, the price has more than doubled this year and has gone parabolic in recent weeks: up from about $1,000 in March to over $2,000 recently. What’s going on?

Brad here. Today’s post is from Peter Essele, one of Commonwealth’s senior portfolio managers on the Preferred Portfolio Services^® Select platform. Peter has written here before about a number of investment issues. I think you will find his take on where markets are right now—with special attention to the VIX, which has been in the news a lot of late—is both timely and potentially important. Over to you, Pete.