With market turbulence continuing today and questions pouring in, I am struck once again by the core issue we’re wrestling with here: the time horizon problem. Although we get meaningful results in the long term, we often feel compelled to react in the short term. 

I’ve been traveling this week, spending a day in Washington talking with the press and then speaking this morning at the Financial Planning Association conference. These trips are always useful in that I get a chance to bounce ideas off a lot of people in the real world. They can also be surprising. Not so much in the questions I’m asked—people are worried about the economy, worried about the markets, wondering what’s next—but in what comes out of my mouth when I answer them.

In one of the most encouraging headlines we’ve seen recently, the median U.S. household income rose in 2015 by the most since the mid-1960s.

After months of relative calm in the financial markets, we’ve seen big bounces over the past several days, down and up and down again this morning. What’s going on?

There was only one major economic report last week, but the data it presented was a very big negative surprise. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, which tracks the service sector, was released on Tuesday and showed a decline from 55.5 to 51.4—a six-year low and significantly worse than the expected small drop to 54.9.

The big news as I write this is that the stock market is down more than 1 percent. That translates to more than 200 points for the Dow, 30 points for the S&P 500, and 80 points for the Nasdaq.

Looking at the screen, I see nothing but red. Ouch.

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.

After the good news a month ago, several of the major economic indicators I track are moving downward once again. The service sector was the biggest negative surprise, but job growth also came in below expectations. While other news was positive, particularly in the realm of consumer confidence, and there are no signs of immediate trouble, weak data for the business sector suggests the recent rebound may have been only temporary.

Last week’s economic data showed that U.S. consumers continue to earn and spend while business continues to struggle. With both income and spending up, and surprisingly high levels of confidence, consumers are still driving economic growth. Business, on the other hand, has stepped back from the stronger results of the previous several months.

As I said yesterday, the jobs numbers are (in my opinion) the most important economic data we need to watch. It seems appropriate, as the Labor Day weekend begins, to spend some time thinking about where the labor market is going.