This market reminds me of an old friend who had the unfortunate tendency to obsess over details. Hyper-focused on the Fed’s every word, investors are driving this market batty, parsing and splitting each piece of economic data, each Fed governor’s statement into smaller and ostensibly more consumable bits only to spew them out the following day. Up one session. Down the next. Manic, euphoric and very hard to live with.

So what is an investor to do?

Some are pulling money out of stock funds — to the tune of $16.2 billion last week alone and, according to Merrill Lynch, $46 billion over the last month. Sentiment, measured by various organizations, indicates investors are more bearish than bullish for the first time since the fall of 2011.

The experts are divided, too.  According to Barron’s, about half of the 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted the Fed will lift rates, although traders in Fed-funds futures are much less certain, with about 28 percent expecting an increase. If the experts can’t agree, the rest of us have no chance.

Let’s consider a few facts.   Click here for more:  The Arizona Republic