For weeks I've been struggling to come up with a post that puts recent events and trends into a coherent perspective. It's been difficult, however, since for every positive there seems to be a negative. Optimism here, pessimism there. Good fundamentals (e.g., great liquidity, very low credit and swap spreads, very low weekly claims, strong confidence numbers, lots of job openings) alongside obvious signs of economic weakness (e.g., trade wars negatively impacting global trade, very low real interest rates, slowing jobs growth, an inverted yield curve, a big slowdown in earnings growth, weak manufacturing surveys,