Driving me to elementary school one morning, my father asked me, "What has four wheels and flies?"
I don't know, what?" I responded.
"A garbage truck!"
I laughed hysterically. I can't recall how old I was, but I remember the moment with clarity.
 
Now, years later, I find myself in the driver's seat shuttling my own busy family from one activity to another. On a recent outing to the skating rink, my daughter Hannah in the front seat and three of her best friends in the back, I asked, "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?"
"I don't know, what?" they replied, in unison.
"Pilgrims!"
They too laughed at the silliness of my joke, mostly out of respect.
 
Minutes after my witticism had become a distant memory and silence had once again filled the car as they returned to the more important task of texting, laughter emerged from the back seat as Olivia was now giggling and exclaiming, "I get it now!"
 
To Olivia, the joke, initially lost on her, was now funny- because the answer was now obvious.
 
We have all been there. The moment when it all makes sense, when all of the pieces have fallen into place and we "get it." For some of us it happens sooner rather than later.
 
Olivia was slow to react, a detrimental trait when surrounded by 15 year-olds. A beneficial one, however, when investing.
 
One of the greatest bull markets in recorded history has been followed by one the most disappointing periods in market history, mainly after it was so emphatically announced in 1999 that the market cycle was dead.
 
Oops. What has died was not the business cycle, but rather our faith in equities.
 
The usual alarms are beginning to sound as money is pouring into fixed income instruments. We can yell from the mountaintop that these bonds, many of which are selling at a premium, are setting you up to let you down. Investors, however, will take comfort as our dire warnings have yet to unfold in a year's time, as the massive cataclysm we predicted has yet to occur. Then, once lulled into security and submission, the signs of the validity of our predictions will begin to emerge. Capacity utilization will begin to move upward to the more normal 85%. Unemployment, one of the areas that typically witnesses improvement towards the end of a cycle, will begin to drop. Inflation will rear its ugly head, interest rates will begin their rise to a more normal historical range, and investors in fixed income will cry "foul" -- all of which will occur as the stock market continues to climb its famed wall of worry.
 
Those who don't get it--those who didn't see it--will once again be disappointed in their investment returns. At this point, they will have the benefit of hindsight.
 
Our jobs as investment advisers is to help our clients see it before it becomes obvious. If not, the joke will be on them.