By Stephen Gandel for Fortune 

Once again, the global élite are going to have a hard time sticking to the program.

The CEOs, top academics, and world leaders—many of whom have traveled by private jet and then helicopter to Davos, a secluded Swiss ski town—for this year’s World Economic Forum are officially here to explore how technological change will alter the global economy. But the discussion is more likely to focus on the disruption going on in an area that for many who attend the World Economic Forum is closer to home—financial markets.

Outside of financial markets, many of the topics being discussed in Davos do seem very timely, including Europe’s migrant crisis, how the West should respond to growing threat of Islamist State-inspired terrorism, and climate change.

The U.S. stock market has had its worst start to a year in history, down 8% in two weeks, sunk by a drop in commodities markets, particularly oil, as well as a raft of data and market volatility from China that suggest the world economy, just eight years after the financial crisis, may again be in for major distress.