Apparently our economists cannot figure out what is going on with the economy.

The DJIA just went negative for the year as interest rates are thought to remain high in the foreseeable future

The yields on the 10-year Treasury note rose 0.119 percentage point Tuesday to 4.801%, the highest level since the subprime mortgage crisis began in August 2007. On Wall Street, the Dow Industrials fell about 431 points, or 1.3%, giving up all their gains for the year. The S&P 500 declined 1.4%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.9%.

If the recent climb in borrowing costs—along with the accompanying slump in stock prices and the stronger dollar—is sustained, that could meaningfully slow the U.S. and global economies over the next year. The swiftness of the recent rise also increases the risk of financial-market breakdowns.

The likeliest causes appear to be a combination of expectations of better U.S. growth and concern that huge federal deficits are pressuring investors’ capacity to absorb so much debt.

I know some people who already got out of the markets and that was likely a smart move short term. Still being 10 years or so away from retirement I am less eager to move my investments around at this point, especially those associated with my retirement. Zero cost averaging and all that. I still believe that the Market is due a surge (but it might not be till after Biden is long gone).

The bigger problem is that moving money around is always a gamble and I admittedly guess wrong as often as I do right. In spite of once selling investments for a living and having a better than average concept of the markets, the idea of individuals beating the hedge funds and institutional investors is more often than not a losing proposition.

Let's just say that my personal Ameritrade account has well underperformed my professionally managed 401K portfolio. The best investment I have made recently is making a personal buy into an EFT that works on hedging money against interests rates. It's listed with my other stocks, but is not actually a stock and go figure that it is my only real consistent gainer recently.

Now if we ask ourselves why the economists are so confused right now, I would offer that the field (like so many others) has been poisoned by politics and the politicization of everything. So they remain confused whenever things are bad under liberal policies or good under conservative policies. You can chalk that one up to cognitive dissonance base on how economics instructors are teaching the economy should work vs how the economy really work. If you accept the former, you are always going to be confused about the latter.