It's a pretty miserable time to take a big financial risk

Tyler Le/BI

There's no such thing as the perfect time for a big decision. But when I reached out to Julia Coronado, the president of the economics consulting firm MacroPolicy Perspectives, to ask whether it's a good moment to take a significant financial risk, at least in the relative sense, her succinct email reply was telling:

"Lol, short answer is no!"

Given how complicated major transactions can be, there are plenty of caveats and counterexamples. On the whole, however, it...