The other day, we talked a bit about what the first quarter of 2019 could tell us about the rest of the year, but it provided only a high-level look. To help us understand what is going on as we approach the second quarter, today I want to dig deeper to evaluate what happened and why.

The jobs report (formally the employment report) is always important. In fact, there is no single more important economic fact than how the labor market is doing. This report hits all of the issues: job creation, unemployment, wage growth, and labor demand.

I have pretty much been ignoring Brexit over the past several weeks, apart from noting it as a risk factor. The reason was that there was no way to predict what could happen—and there were so many options that trying to analyze any one of them was, in the end, pointless.

I was thinking again about the interesting times post. I want to give another slant on it that might help people get through the interesting times that are likely ahead: to separate our Wall Street thinking from our Main Street thinking. If we keep our minds firmly on Main Street, we can ride out quite a bit of news without getting derailed. It is when we start listening to Wall Street that we can get into trouble. This may seem a bit odd, coming from me. I’m a Wall Street creature, right?

As we move to the close of the first quarter, we now have some data to think about what the rest of 2019 will hold. Let’s take a look at what we can reasonably conclude.

There is supposedly an old Chinese curse that states, “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly have been doing just that—and times look likely to get even more interesting going forward. But how do we think about investing (and living) in interesting times?

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." — Woody Allen

Recently, I’ve had a lot to say about debt. Back in December, at the height of the holiday season, I wrote about consumer debt and concluded that it really wasn’t a significant risk. That’s the good, relatively speaking. Government debt, which I discussed about a month ago, is a bigger risk. That is certainly a problem but not an immediate one. My best guess is that it becomes an immediate problem at some time in the next three to five years. That’s the bad. Now, it’s time to move on to the ugly—corporate debt. Here, the bad news comes in several flavors

Yesterday’s Fed statement and press conference revealed a significant reversal from previous meetings. When Chair Powell told markets to “drop dead” a few months ago, the consensus was that the Fed was committed to normalizing policy despite the market risks. Since then, and especially with the most recent statement and conference, the Fed has done a full 180. Now, it is acting to support markets and the economy.

This will be a short post as I am on a plane headed back home from Florida. For me, this brief time in the air is a great opportunity to do something I try to do a couple of times a year here on the blog: focus on gratitude. Gratitude is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your life. Doing a daily gratitude practice, where I write down three things I am grateful for every day, has changed my life immeasurably for the better. Gratitude is not usually associated with air travel, I admit, but let’s see what we can do here.