In the wake of the election, many of the economic indicators we track here each month saw substantial improvement. There was some weakness going into the election, but the news since then has been stronger. Although job growth continues to tick down, consumer confidence has rebounded in a big way, and business confidence has also continued to move higher.

With U.S. stocks surging to new highs and trouble brewing elsewhere in the world (the failed Italian referendum and resignation of Matteo Renzi, not to mention the continued decline in the Chinese currency), I’ve been getting questions about whether investors should just stay here in the USA.

Last week’s economic reports were surprisingly strong, with both consumer and business data beating expectations, often by significant amounts. These results support the idea that the economy continues to improve—and that the improvement appears to be accelerating.

A speech I give regularly starts out with a series of worries investors have had in recent years. Four years ago, for example, we had three major concerns: the dollar was incredibly weak, oil prices were way too high, and China was a rising power. More recently (say, a year ago), we also had three major worries: the dollar was far too strong, oil prices were too low, and China was collapsing.

Looking back on last month, the first word that comes to mind is wow . . .

I’ve been pretty optimistic about the U.S. economy and stock markets over the past couple of weeks, and I stand by that. Almost all of the news is surprisingly good and likely to improve even further.

Over the past couple of weeks, everyone’s been wondering how long the stock market's “Trump bounce” will last. Several people have asked me whether a pullback is due and how bad it might be. Even as markets move higher, there is quite a bit of worry.

The stock market keeps hitting new highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 19,000 for the first time last week, and the S&P 500 is up to 2,200, itself a record. In many ways, the market is off to the races.

Overall, last week’s data was quite positive. Existing home sales did very well, while there were signs that business investment is looking up. Although the news was not all good, most of it was.

With everyone out shopping today, we'll soon be seeing the usual slew of Black Friday data (and the instant economic analysis that goes along with it).