When I woke up this morning, I checked the markets as I usually do, and my first thought was—paraphrased—what the heck? What happened last night to drive Asian and particularly European markets down that hard?

Today’s post comes from guest contributor Peter Essele, a portfolio manager on Commonwealth’s Preferred Portfolio Services^® Select platform.

Like many of us, the equity markets have started 2016 with a New Year’s resolution: get in shape.

As I’ve said many times lately, I do not believe we’re heading for a repeat of 2008–2009.

A number of factors—a stronger U.S. economy, a less leveraged financial system and consumer, and an absence of imbalances like we saw with housing—suggest that we’re not in for a 2008-style collapse. Although the economy may be entering a slowdown, growth is likely to continue.

As always happens in times of uncertainty, the doomsayers are back.

Not that long ago, they were predicting that destructive Federal Reserve policy would lead to the collapse of the economy and the downfall of the dollar. After being proven wrong on those fronts, they’ve returned with a new story: that the drop in oil prices will be the undoing of the U.S. economy.

The first sentence of my market update for last January went like this: “U.S. stock markets dropped across the board in January, as investors reassessed their risk tolerances.” Sound familiar? I went on to note that the primary concerns were slow earnings growth, caused by weakness elsewhere in the world, and a strong dollar. Again, does that ring a bell?

As we discussed yesterday, a number of countries depend on oil money to keep their populations happy, and lower oil prices are threatening those governments’ legitimacy. They lost control over the pricing mechanism as free markets took over, spurred by new technology—in this case, fracking.

As 2015 draws to a close, the time has come for my traditional Christmas post. Best wishes to you and yours this holiday.

I have always loved Christmas. But as I grew older, I think I lost much of the wonder and the spirit behind the love and giving of the season. Now I have a seven-year-old son who is wrestling with the stress of being good under the eye of the “Elf on the Shelf,” eyeing presents under the tree, and baking cookies with his mom. His anticipation and enthusiasm are infectious, and I realize that, thanks to his influence, I am recovering much of what I had lost.

Feeling and living gratitude is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your life. Ever since listening to Shawn Achor speak at a Commonwealth conference several years ago, I have been writing down at least three things I am grateful for every day.

Recently, I’ve been working on the 2016 outlook, reviewing all of the usual data that we highlight monthly, as well as developing a series of other projections on wages, income, spending, corporate profits, and so forth. Although the consumer remains healthy, one of the things that has caught my eye has been a surprising deterioration in a number of business-related components of the economy, and it has me thinking about what this could mean in terms of an economic slowdown.

As we move into the holiday shopping season, we find ourselves deluged by catalogs, sales, advertising, and—in my case—impassioned pleas by my seven-year-old son for toys. Spending really doesn’t seem to be a concern, at least in terms of not enough of it.