Like any superhero or action movie star who relies upon a “trusty sidekick,” Mr. Market stays strong, confident, and bold with the Federal Reserve at his side. Chairman Bernanke (and heir apparent Janet Yellen) firmly believes that the wealth effect provided by rising stock and housing markets is essential for maintaining consumer spending and corporate earnings growth.

As most everyone expected, Congressional brinksmanship gave way to an eleventh hour agreement that will put the government back in business and raise the debt ceiling. However, it’s only a temporary measure that merely defers another knock-down/drag-out for a few months. The question is, how will investors react after an initial bullish burst of relief?

Stock market bears needed a new weapon to fight off bold bulls, and they found it in the same place that WMD’s often emerge -- in the Middle East, this time in Syria. In this case, however, I’m not talking about a weapon of mass destruction, but rather a weapon of market destruction.

Earnings season is now officially underway, but the Fed is still holding the limelight, as traders anxiously awaited on Wednesday the FOMC minutes from the June 18/19 meeting. Although several members are pushing to begin tapering off this fall on asset purchases (bonds and mortgage-backed securities), which spooked the markets, in fact it now appears that the controlling opinion is that the U.S.

Market timing is tough duty. Even as stocks have risen inexorably and we all knew it couldn’t go up in a straight line, still picking tops is hard. You can be wrong for a long time, and either lose your shirt shorting the market, or miss out on big gains by staying out.

Last week, the Dow and S&P 500 large caps hit five-year highs, the Russell 2000 small caps and the S&P 400 mid-caps made all-time highs, and the Nasdaq recorded a 12-year closing high. But some investors are evidently showing concern that it has all come too far too fast.