Just as I do with the economy, I review the market each month for warning signs of trouble in the near future. Although valuations are now high—a noted risk factor in past bear markets—markets can stay expensive (or get much more expensive) for years and years, which doesn’t give us much to go on timing-wise.

The news this month is good once again, with all indicators pointing to continued expansion, despite a small pullback from January levels in some cases. Based on the latest data, the downtrend that developed in 2016 continues to reverse. The consistency of the reversal across multiple data sets and the positive levels of the data are encouraging. 

In a departure from recent slowing, last week’s data indicated that the economy may be making a comeback.

I had planned to post my monthly Economic Risk Factor Update today, but that will have to wait until next week. Spoiler alert: Conditions remain favorable, but the jobs report issued today was a big surprise and merits some detailed consideration.

When I hear the words "Groundhog Day," I always think of the movie, not the holiday. Here in Massachusetts, we’re more or less guaranteed six more months of winter, so we don’t pay too much attention to the groundhog. The movie, on the other hand, really does speak to me.

When the regular meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) concludes today, the Federal Reserve will issue a statement describing the meeting and what, if anything, it has decided to change about monetary policy.

Last month was a great month for stock markets, and from a financial market perspective, the world is in good shape. In fact, we’re seeing the first synchronized global expansion since the financial crisis. So, what’s the problem?

As we approach the end of the beginning of the year, we know a couple of things:

• The S&P 500 is up just shy of 1.5 percent for the month, as I write this. If the market mantra “As goes January so goes the year” holds, we’re in for a pretty good year, at least for the stock market.
• President Trump actually meant most of his campaign promises and is proceeding to act on them as quickly as he can.

Last week showed more signs of a potential slowdown in the economy. Housing lagged, despite remaining at strong overall levels, and GDP growth and business investment slowed. But although the headline figures were disappointing, the details were better, suggesting that the current weakness is only temporary.

In the past couple of days, I’ve led a pretty optimistic quarterly call for investors, given a couple of pretty optimistic TV interviews, and written some fairly optimistic pieces here on the blog. Although I stand by all of my statements, it occurs to me that, for someone known as Eeyore, I’ve displayed an unusual amount of optimism lately.