Narrative drives most of economics. Everything seems to be part of a story, and how that story is told often leads to critical error.

Forecasting is simply not a strength of the species; we are much better with tools and narrative storytelling.

Markets are frequently ahead of, and often out of sync with, the economy.

Gains in corporate profits depend in large part on accelerating global economic growth.

Active management leads to lots of poor investor behavior. It sends people chasing after whoever has the hot hand at the moment.

Most of the time, economic data is fairly benign. I don't wish to imply it is meaningless, but it is not a driver of stock markets. Indeed, the correlation between economic noise and how equity markets perform has been wildly overemphasized.