Brew of arsenic and cheap scotch and sipping it on my dirty linoleum floor. No, i like my data to be mixed. That huge pool of data that confronts us every day, because the more mixed the data, the higher the averages. The dow climbing 78 points. Allnew records. Nasdaq advancing. The index was weaker than forecast. The jobless claims, they came out. Stronger than forecast. Consumer Sentiment Survey that shows Consumer Confidence is high. Weve got a bloomberg report that came out that shows its at a fivemonth low. Philly and the empire state say good gains in manufacturing. But orders are among the weakest of leading indicators. Thats what i call mixed. Why do i like mixed . Because the market likes mixed. Looking at the dow jones industrial, still one more alltime high today. Why is this mixed state of macro data such a pleasing cocktail to the bulls, even as it can be a tonic, a toxic one, to the bears . First, because my biggest longterm fear as an investor is the scourge of inflation