I don't pay much attention to what the Fed says because I don't know what they mean when they say it. It's like Nostradamus. These folks talk in quatrains. It's kind of comical as everyone tries to dissect this stuff,

Consumers are clearly being impacted by the three hurricanes, ... That, combined with natural gas and gasoline prices, is having an effect. I think $3 a gallon gasoline is the tipping point to a consumer that is under siege. But this number is really no great surprise.

Dedicated short sellers tend to be among the smarter investors on the Street,

If you think you can recklessly buy stocks you have to be assuming more than a V-shaped recovery in earnings -- you have to be assuming a hockey-stick shaped recovery.

Yet you can make good money in that environment. It just takes a different strategy; you try to hold a core bunch of stocks you think are in secular bull markets and trade at inflection points.

The cheerleaders talk about the economy growing, but the economy grew at 7 percent from 1966 to 1982, while stocks went nowhere because valuations were too optimistic. And they're optimistic now, by historic measurements.