In my latest Market Thoughts video, I discuss some of the reasons why March was such a tough month for the markets, employment and job creation, and the housing market. 

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, whatever holiday you celebrated. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good Friday from an economic standpoint.

The employment data released last week disappointed across the board:

Once again, it’s time for our monthly update on risk factors that have proven to be good indicators of economic trouble ahead. As expected, the data hasn’t changed much from last month—it remains positive in almost all areas and has continued to improve in many cases—but it’s still important to keep an eye on things.

As we move into the year, though, the economic forecast remains bright.

I’m giving a talk today at the Commonwealth Business Experience conference, which, as usual, has been just wonderful. But as I woke up this morning, to go over my presentation one more time, I realized that it’s April Fools’ day.

Not, perhaps, the best day to give a presentation, but it does give me a certain amount of wiggle room for anything I might get wrong . . .

As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t believe that we’re in the middle of currency wars, but I do see countries taking action to boost their economic and job growth. The side effects include what may, from a certain perspective, look like a currency war.

After writing Friday’s piece on currency wars, it occurred to me that some of the assumptions baked into my argument warranted a closer look. Essentially, instead of a war, I believe we’re seeing an economic readjustment, which is a significantly different way of looking at the situation.

Plenty of people are concerned about the “currency wars” now playing out around the world. As you might guess from the quotes, I don’t entirely agree with the notion that we’re at war—and I’m even less convinced that the consequences would be as extreme as that kind of language implies.

Yesterday was a bad one for the markets, with the S&P 500 falling almost 1.5 percent. With this morning’s additional drop, we’ve broken the 100-day moving average.

Time to worry?

Rereading yesterday’s post, I’m reminded of our tendency to look for things to worry about. To me, fretting about the systemic problems of low energy prices and high savings rates is a stretch, a sign that we’ve run out of real concerns.

Eeyore to the rescue! Although I’ve been saying for the past couple of years that the recovery is real and strengthening, I’ve also made a point to keep an eye out for risks.

This will be a short-ish post, as I find myself battling a cold that’s getting worse. The weather, fortunately, seems to be getting better, so hopefully I will too at some point.

Like my health, the economy took a hit this winter. There’s a reasonable chance we’ll see some sort of “snowdown” in the data; indeed, we already have for many data points. The question is whether this represents a meaningful slowdown or, like last year, is simply the result of terrible winter weather.