Patience.  Patience.  The stock market (as measured by the Dow) has been doing great.  But of course the job market still stinks for a lot of people.  And the housing market?  Well, depends where you are.

But, a lot of people look at the surging stock market and want to get in on the fun.  My best advice to you is to be patient and beware.  The stock market is going up for a lot of reasons: decent corporate earnings, investors moving out of bonds, poor alternatives to stocks, etc.  And most of all, the Fed's actions help make stocks attractive.

This can go on for a while longer, maybe a lot longer.  But this cannot go on forever.  Markets rise, and fall.  If you are not invested in the market right now, and you wish you had gotten in a couple of years ago, well tough.  You didn't and you can't go back.  So you have to think about what might be your best move from here.

If you have money to invest, I'm going to assume you'll use mutual funds, maybe a blend of different types of stocks (large and small and domestic and international).  And I'm going to assume you have a long term time horizon for this money you want to invest (like, 10 years or more).  

Be patient with how you move this money into your portfolio of chosen funds.  If you put everything you have into mutual funds today, what if the market tanks next month, you'll wish you'd waited, right?  

My guess is that the market will have some sort of a nasty turn at some point during this year.  It can't go up every day, every week, all year, right?  And you'd like to invest at better prices than are available right now, today.  

So, move your money into the market slowly, bit by bit, over several months.  Like, 12 or even 18 months.  Either automatically or manually, set it up so you invest a small portion of your money each month, for 18 months.  Then, if the market tanks, keep investing on the way down.  Even if the market goes down for a whole year, if you invest each month, think of the prices you'll get.  

But be patient.  And don't try to chase this market.  It's gone up a lot.  It's got momentum.  But remember, when everyone around you thinks the market is a sure thing, be very very concerned.  When it looks like there's no risk in the stock market, that's when we're near a top, and people are going to be taught another lesson about the risks involved in investing.

Good luck, ask questions, be skeptical.  And, peace!

Transferable skills.  That's something that we all need to be careful to cultivate in our careers.  If your education is in the humanities/arts, your focus should be on building some concrete skills in an area such as marketing, accounting/bookkeeping, database management, etc.  These types of hard and specific skills, when combined with your broad-based humanities education will make you a killer employee over time.  You'll understand the big picture and you'll have functional/technical expertise.

If on the other hand, you have been trained/educated in a specific technical area (such as a programming language, a machine process, some IT application, etc.), then your challenge is to make sure that your skills and knowledge aren't too narrow to remain useful over the long-term.  Try broadening how you look at your area of knowledge.  How can you be an expert in a functional area, not just in one narrow task?

Many people are still struggling out there: looking for a job, looking for a better job.  We can rail against the government and against employers all we want.  But at the end of the day, if you have a solid, transferrable set of skills, in an area that is important to many many employers, you will find work.

But it takes time and care to acquire skills.  So if you are feeling stuck, try focusing on what you need to add to your resume in terms of skills.  And hang in there.

Good luck, and peace!

Think of the economy as an ecosystem, like a wildlife pond or swamp.   There are different niches being developed and exploited, various predators and prey seek safety and advantage.  It's a big interconnected system where we approach but never quite reach equilibrium.  And what happens if one species becomes too successful?  A pond can be overrun by millfoil or other invasive plants (overpopulation).  A swamp can be depleted if a predator becomes too predominant and has no rivals (too big to fail).  Lakes can be overfished.

I like to use this analogy as a way to think about growth and economic policies.  Interesting to you?