The news this morning on the jobs report was much better than expected, with a strong June offsetting a weak May. This supports the idea that some of the weak data we’ve seen recently is just a summer slowdown, rather than something worse. And with consumer and business confidence still at high levels, prospects for the immediate future continue to look good.

To start, for those of you wondering exactly what the “VIX” is, formally, it is an index of expected volatility in the returns of the S&P 500 Index. It’s calculated based on the prices of eight different put and call options. If that doesn’t mean much, it might help to think of the VIX as a fear index. When the market tanks, the VIX rises; when the market is smooth—and expected to remain so—the VIX is low. In other words, low VIX equals low fear.

From our recent analysis, we can conclude that stock market risk is high. We can conclude that, even if things are different this time, they probably aren’t different enough to make a meaningful change in the outcome. And we can conclude that 2017 might well be 1999 all over again.

In several recent posts, I have made the case that today’s economy looks quite a bit like 1999—and that the markets may be setting up to look like 2000. Although this argument certainly seems reasonable, we have to ask ourselves how it could be wrong. Despite all the similarities, could it be different this time? If so, how? And what would that mean?

I concluded in yesterday’s post that there might well be a storm coming. So, the next question we need to answer is this: How will we know when the storm is about to hit?

In yesterday’s post, we investigated whether 2017 is similar to 1999—and decided that it is. This leads us to the next obvious question: will 2018 look like 2000? And what would that actually mean?

When I look at the current economic and market environment, I think it shares a lot in common with 1999. The tech industry is booming, unemployment is low, consumer and business confidence are high, and investors are very complacent. But just how similar are 1999 and 2017? To get a better sense, I decided to do a detailed economic review. So, without further ado, let’s set the wayback machine to 1999.

Now that conference season is done, over the next week or so, I plan to share some of the thoughts I have been passing along to Commonwealth’s advisors. I will start today with the title of the presentation I gave at a number of conferences this spring—“1999 v2.0?”—and explain why I chose it.

I am traveling today and away from my usual data sources. The market seems to be bouncing back, though, so I thought I’d take a break from addressing immediate investment worries in favor of some quick thoughts on a few disparate topics that, believe it or not, are connected by a common denominator.  

U.S. markets have bounced back a bit after yesterday’s decline, but I think investors are still rattled by recent developments. I said yesterday that I don’t think this is the onset of the big one, and we shouldn’t worry. At the same time, it is certainly possible that we’ll see markets fall even further. If it’s not time to worry yet, when will it be?