Many investors maintain beliefs about the stock market which often have them looking the wrong way at the market turns. In fact, I can no longer count how many comments I see about how the Fed is what directs our stock market action, and it just makes me scratch my head.

The main argument by Fed watchers is that the Fed’s easy money drives the stock market. Yet, the Fed’s balance sheet peaked at $4.52 trillion in January of 2015 and is down over 12% from that peak. Yet the stock market has added over 40% since the Fed’s balance sheet peaked. Remember how often we were told by the Fed watchers that a shrinking Fed balance sheet would lead to a stock market crash? Well, it certainly did, but not in the direction most expected.