with us is michelle girard from natwest markets.morning to you. >> good morning. >> thank you for joining us. how important is it that we round off this week without further declines? >> i tell you, it would be encouraging. what's unsettling is the volatility in the marketplace. then it has a tendency to feed on itself. then everybody brings it back around in terms of does the volatility in the markets turn into something more fundamental in nature? does it undermine confidence. does that feed into economic slowing. it's raised all sorts of questions about what we'll be doing for the fed if we can find our footing, if this ends up to be just sort of short-term volatility, we can quickly stabilize, move forward. >> one eye on washington. the other on wall street. do you think the recent burst of risk aversion, does that negate the bullish narrative that we're seeing play out in earnings season? >> i don't -- in general, i don't think anything we've seen to date changes the very positive fundamental backdrop. we have an economy on sol