I grew up in a big family. As one of the middle children of six, there wasn’t a moment of quiet in my formative years, let alone clear memories of outright peace. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t war either. It felt more like a long-term truce.

Now as adults, my siblings and their families converge upon Traverse City each summer. My formerly big family has become huge. The original six have multiplied into 23. The complexity of it all seems exponential.

We’ve now got kids under five, all the way up to age 20. We’ve also got vegans and meat lovers, too. Just like my parents, my siblings were also cursed with a very opinionated lot. The many elements that determine the overall outcome of our reunions are incalculable. And, yet, the contained chaos works.

It reminds me of the way times have changed in financial markets. Information now flows faster and conflicting opinions pop up on our devices every second. Today, the opinions on the current state of the economy and the path of the markets are fast and furious.

Some are warning of an imminent recession and others call for continued growth even as we’ve reached one of the longest economic expansions in modern times. Bonds are clearly signaling a slowdown and stocks keep hitting all-time highs. Just like my family gatherings, the environment is a cacophony of conflicting opinions. You simply have to know what you can and cannot control.

When it comes to building and managing investment portfolios, there are three elements that matter most, in my view.

To start, you can control the asset allocation. That’s simply about finding the appropriate mix of stocks and bonds. Studies show that your portfolio’s asset allocation is the factor that most affects portfolio returns and overall risk.

Next, you can control the level of diversification inside your portfolios. Diversification is about finding the right mix within your asset allocation. As I remind new clients when setting our formal investment management guidelines, a portfolio with 60% in stocks isn’t balanced at all if that exposure is represented by just one stock. Sorry Warren Buffett, I really don’t care if it is Berkshire Hathaway. One stock simply isn’t enough for us mere mortals!

Last, we have control over our investment selection process. Whether it’s picking Visa over AT&T or choosing a low-cost index fund over an actively-managed mutual fund, the specific investments in a portfolio really do matter. For example, the rising tide of a bull market tends to lift all boats. However, in a recession, AT&T will likely provide portfolio protection that Visa will not.

Just like my family gatherings, both the speed and volume of market opinions has picked up exponentially. Today, the near-term outcome seems less predictable than usual. My advice is to focus on what can be controlled and what cannot is best handled with a healthy sense of acceptance. As I’ve learned at my family reunions, pouring yourself an extra glass of wine really can’t hurt either!

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

Like the stock market, political partisanship is at an all-time high. Case in point; it recently took the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), our nation’s protector of investors, 1,363 pages to barely tweak the rules of the road for how financial professionals should treat their clients. That’s about the same length as War and Peace, folks!

After a decades-long industry battle, with one camp laser-focused on the goal of imposing a true fiduciary duty on all financial pros, of all stripes, to place their clients’ interests ahead of their own, the big brokerage firms successfully watered down the regulations. The SEC’s final rule is ironically called “Regulation Best Interest.” The result? Brokers and registered investment advisers will continue to operate under a different set of professional obligations to their clients. And, naturally, the general public will remain unlikely to spot the difference.

The new regulation represents the nail in the coffin for Obama’s high-risk strategy in early 2015 to require brokers to avoid and disclose all conflicts of interest and act as a fiduciary to their clients at all times. After all, registered investment advisers have long-practiced under those rules. Why did Obama try to push this through the Department of Labor and not the SEC? For years, Congress wouldn’t seat enough board members to the SEC, essentially creating complete institutional gridlock.

The epithet on Obama’s attempt was finally written just last month with a partisan vote to not impose an industry-wide, unified fiduciary standard of care. It only took about three years and heavy industry lobbying to quash his attempt.

What the new Regulation Best Interest means for clients is that consumer confusion will continue. Brokers will still be able to imperceptibly switch professional hats; on one hand acting as simple, middle men in a financial transaction and, on the other, acting as true fiduciaries to their clients. Rest assured, the color of their hats will be only shades apart.

Like a Facebook privacy policy consent button, consumers should also get ready for more financial industry disclosure forms with embedded website hyperlinks designed to obfuscate consumers’ true understanding of the nature of their relationship with their financial professional.

The SEC is even making registered investment advisers add two additional pages to their already 20+ page regulatory disclosures. It shouldn’t take 2 pages, let alone 1,363 pages, to state unequivocally that you have a legal fiduciary duty to always place your clients’ interests first. One short sentence will do.

Of course, just as transparency shines a light on the truth, opacity is the lifeblood of a complex sales process. In many ways, that’s precisely what the SEC was created to guard against. Their new Regulation Best Interest simply doesn’t get the job done. Political partisanship certainly did.

It’s once again time for registered investment advisers to take matters into their own hands and loudly beat the drum about their legal fiduciary duty to clients. Now, that is definitely in the public’s best interest!

In my humble opinion, the best-titled financial newsletter around is called “Things That Make You Go Hmmm” Lately, that catchy title has been banging around in my head. Let me just list the reasons, in no particular order of importance.

The Federal Reserve is openly talking about cutting interest rates after finally getting them up to a whopping 2% or so! Even more astonishing, like Pavlov’s dog, the mere mention of this move is causing stocks to once again reach all-time highs. Cutting rates, all-time highs? Hmmm.

We’re on the razor’s edge of taking military action in the ever-volatile Middle East, and investors are appearing to shrug their collective shoulders. Even more bizarre, our president is tweeting about his most inner thoughts on why he ordered strikes and abruptly reversed course in the span of a few minutes. The market’s reaction? Inaudible. Hmmm.

Speaking of tweets, in just the last month or so, a trade deal with China was nearly complete only to see talks suddenly fall apart. And, how did investors learn about it all? Twitter. Clearly believing this was an appropriate way to announce changes in our trade policies, we were soon greeted with deeply threatening tweets about massive tariffs with Mexico. And those threats weren’t even tied to our trade policies. Hmmm.

We’re now over 10 years into our economic expansion with our national unemployment rate near a record-low of about 3.5% and recent inflation readings are just below 2%. Yet our federal deficit is butting right up against $1 trillion. Not long ago, this type of fiscal policy would have sparked outrage, concern and political hand-wringing. Today? Nada. Hmmm.

Speaking of debt, with the recent collapse in interest rates, the global markets now offer over $13 trillion of government debt yielding negative interest. Yes, you did hear that right. Ironically, it makes our own skinny 2% bond yields the envy of the developed world. Hmmm.

As we all know too well, we’re about to embark on another presidential campaign. With now 25 Democrats vying for the presidency, the two leading candidates are soon to turn 77 and 78 years old. That fact actually makes people forget that Trump would be 75 only a few months after his re-election. With all due respect, I haven’t personally met any men well into their 70s who think they should be running a large country, let alone a small one. Hmmm.

This fall marks my 20th year in the investment business and, yes, I do still have plenty of hair on my head and chin to scratch. Let me be clear about one thing, at no time is the world totally orderly. And, rarely are financial markets free of true head scratchers. Still, these are most interesting times and, I must admit, they are making me go, hmmm, a little too often lately!

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

People are starting to worry about a recession. Based on the Federal Reserve’s reaction, they are too. Yet, recessions don’t just happen without warning and economic expansions don’t come with set expiration dates.

Still, recessions are natural. We tend to travel between emotional peaks of euphoria to depression and back again. But, along the way, the pace of economic activity experiences fits-and-starts and the data sends mixed or false signals. This adds to a sense of futility in trying to forecast economic turning points.

When recessions do occur, however, they have a big impact. Our last two recessions produced stock market losses between 50% and 60%. In comparison, the average decline during a recession has been above 30%. Whether severe or pedestrian, it highlights the importance of being both financially and emotionally prepared heading into a recession.

On the employment front, two leading indicators look sound, regardless of the weak jobs report for May. Initial claims for unemployment benefits are still very low and aren’t really moving demonstrably higher. The same steadiness can be seen in the average weekly hours worked by employees in manufacturing. Remember, these are jobs-related data points that tend to show weakness before the onset of a recession.

Next, the latest readings of an index that tracks the mood of the manufacturing sector are down from a year ago but still don’t point to a recession either. Another leading indicator, new orders for durable goods, have also barely seen a downtick. Finally, a measure of the delivery speed of suppliers has weakened slightly but also doesn’t reach recessionary-level readings.

Turning to the housing industry, the number of building permits for new homes has basically been flat for the last couple of years and it is only down a bit from last spring. Incidentally, the current number of building permits now sits at a little more than half the level seen before the financial crisis. So, the housing industry may not have quite the economic impact as it once did. In addition, mortgage rates have recently dropped, probably providing a backstop.

Consumer confidence readings are also still quite high. After the stock market downturn late last year, confidence did fall off some. However, up until the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a rebound in consumer confidence surveys. It should be said that the tight correlation between consumer confidence surveys and the most recent performance of the stock market tends to make this a chicken-or-the-egg type of indicator.

With the fundamental economic indicators largely in the clear, what remains are the financial market-based indicators. Since these show up on your brokerage statements, they do tend to garner attention, especially in the media.

The most worrisome is the now-inverted yield curve. This just means that longer-term interest rates are now lower than short-term interest rates for government debt. While it is not a fool-proof signal, when a yield curve inversion occurs, the odds of an oncoming recession rise.

The Fed has certainly snapped to attention. It is now strongly signaling interest rate cuts, rather than hikes. Their about-face has been very sudden and this perhaps adds to general nervousness. To quell the impression of panic, the Fed is framing their reversal as simply taking out an “insurance policy” on the economic expansion. Of course, their justification for doing so goes well beyond the shape of the yield curve in the age of Trump tweets that threaten our relationships with our major trading partners.

As I mentioned in my most recent column, the uncertainty created by the threat of trade wars does matter. It is worthy of making some proactive, risk-management portfolio adjustments. Yet, as I read the key economic data that historically behave as leading indicators of an oncoming recession, I don’t currently see obvious red flags flying. My advice is likely as bland as it is wise; keep an eye on the hard data, know your portfolio risks, develop a reaction plan and, most of all, guard against making emotional moves.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com