Yesterday, I wrote about the stock market risks that the AT&T/Time Warner merger might be signaling. Each month, I review market risks as suggested by several other key metrics. And over the last year or so, I’ve been giving a presentation to investors on the causal factors behind a sustained bear market.

Overall, my commentary on the markets has been decidedly risk-centric.

It’s been a while since I wrote about inflation, the general increase in prices that makes everything cost more. Inflation has been so low recently that it hasn’t really been a priority. Indeed, there’s been more concern about inflation running too low than too high.

Amazingly enough, after the concern about another Black Monday, the 1987 drop's anniversary today hasn’t generated much media attention. It’s almost like it never happened.

After I posted my piece on diversification last week, my colleagues Peter Essele and Anu Gaggar reminded me that they had done a study of some of the trends behind that post. Their analysis highlights a couple detailed examples of what I was talking about. This may be a more technical read, but the conclusions are compelling. Great job, guys! Over to Peter and Anu.

In the past couple of days, three different people have forwarded me an opinion piece that attempts to draw some parallels between the way the market acted in October 1987—before the infamous Black Monday—and the way it’s acting now. Some analysts are actually issuing alerts that we might get a significant pullback.

Yesterday, I laid out some of the big-picture constraints I see impacting the economy and the markets over the next year or two. Today, let’s take a look at what we can reasonably expect over the next month and for the rest of the year.

Writing my fourth-quarter preview of the economy and markets, which I plan to share with you tomorrow, I started thinking about several big ideas that are in play right now. Though these themes aren’t particularly actionable, they will frame our discussion of the near- to medium-term future.

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.

Back in the office after my vacation, the news is generally good. Economic stats continue to surprise to the upside, markets are close to all-time highs, and the Labor Day weekend is coming. So, of course, as Eeyore, my thoughts are turning to things to worry about.

I’m not the only one either. A reader recently wrote in asking, “What about the national debt?”