Last week’s economic reports showed a range of data, mainly focused on business. The news was surprisingly positive across the board, with business sentiment improving substantially while job growth continued at a more or less steady pace. Overall, based on last week’s data, the economy continues to move forward, with this month’s good news largely reversing the bad news from last month.

After the bad news last month, several major economic indicators have bounced back significantly. The service sector was the biggest positive surprise, but manufacturing also moved back into expansion territory, and consumer confidence jumped up in a big way. Although job growth was somewhat below expectations, it remained at a healthy level.

Tomorrow, the Labor Department releases the jobs report—probably the most important economic report of them all. After all, jobs drive everything. As an indicator of business confidence, job growth is predictive; as the engine of consumer spending, job growth is determinative. We learn a lot about the economy from this report every month.

As I’ve mentioned, the European banking system is a key risk, and Deutsche Bank—one of the largest banks in Germany and Europe—is catching headlines over its troubles. There’s been a great deal of speculation about what this means for the U.S. and world economies and for stock markets. Some have even suggested this might be a “Lehman moment” that could trigger another financial crisis. I asked our international analyst, Anu Gaggar, to take a look and report back on what she found. — Brad

Writing my quarterly update the past couple of days, something occurred to me: international markets are beating U.S. markets for the first time in a while. This is big news, given that U.S. markets have dominated, unusually, for the past couple of years. Also noteworthy is that most asset classes are actually making money for the year—again, something we haven’t seen in a while.

September was a volatile month, with markets dropping only to bounce back at month-end. Large companies in the S&P 500 were down slightly, while smaller companies and those outside of the U.S. did well. Plus, as I discuss in this month's Market Thoughts video, there was a larger-than-expected pullback in the service sector, yet consumer confidence reached a nine-year high.

Last week’s economic reports showed a range of data, mainly focused on the consumer. Consumer news was largely good, but business and industry continued to disappoint, although by less than expected. Overall, based on last week’s data, the economy seems to keep creeping slowly forward, showing little sign of either the acceleration or slowdown that many have been predicting.

Yesterday, I laid out some of the big-picture constraints I see impacting the economy and the markets over the next year or two. Today, let’s take a look at what we can reasonably expect over the next month and for the rest of the year.

Writing my fourth-quarter preview of the economy and markets, which I plan to share with you tomorrow, I started thinking about several big ideas that are in play right now. Though these themes aren’t particularly actionable, they will frame our discussion of the near- to medium-term future.

Should we, as investors, be worried about the presidential election?

After spending last week talking with financial advisors and their clients, and the past couple of days thinking about the debate, it seems that’s the question on pretty much everyone’s mind.