By Sumit Roy

Commodities traded in a mixed fashion this week. Natural gas took the lead position, while gold and silver rebounded modestly. On the other hand, copper and oil sagged along with stocks. The S&P 500 shed more than 1%, taking its year-to-date gain down to 15.5%.

Macroeconomic Highlights

Fed commentary dominated the headlines this week. On Wednesday, minutes of the Fed's May 22 meeting showed that a number of Fed officials were contemplating paring back or ending the central bank's quantitative easing (QE) programs as soon as June, assuming the economy showed signs of sustained growth.

At the same time, in his testimony in front of Congress, Ben Bernanke sent a mixed message. The Fed chairman said that ending QE prematurely would "carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economy recovery." However, he conceded that the bond purchases could end by this fall if the job

I recently read an article on a business news website other than Seeking Alpha that sought to explore why people in the investment industry do not like the Fed's balance sheet expanding quantitative easing (QE) stimulus program. Given my strong disagreement with the content of the article, I was compelled to explore the real reasons why so many in financial markets have disdain for QE.

The Business Insider article that was also headlined on Yahoo Finance was baffling for several key reasons. First, in trying to explain why certain investors do not like QE, the author never bothered to talk to anyone who actually feels that way. Instead, the author decided to contact the likes of Paul Krugman to try and understand the scorn for current Fed policy. Thanks for the perspective, but perhaps the author should have entitled his article "Why People Who Love QE Think People Hate

It seems that the average retail investor has kept their wits about them amid the recent stock market frenzy. One of the grand investment themes entering into 2013 was the "Great Rotation" where timid bond investors would finally be lured out of the darkness to resume risk taking in the stock market. Another prognostication was that the woebegone retail investor that had been burned twice before from 2000 to 2002 and again from 2007 to 2009 only to miss the rally all the way back to fresh new highs this time around would finally return to the stock market in force. But as we stand five months into the New Year, neither of these outcomes has come to pass. Instead, the one thing that we are increasingly learning about the retail investor is that they won't get fooled again by the stock market.

The rally in stocks has been relentless