Before I thought it should be obvious that the stock market would go up when rates drop, and vice versa. But I remember one day about 1-2 months ago, the market

Before I thought it should be obvious that the stock market would go up when rates drop, and vice versa. But I remember one day about 1-2 months ago, the market plunged after the Feds said they might hold off on raising the rates and there wasn't any new bad economic news for a week. All over the news, pundits blamed it as a sign of weakness because the Feds didn't ignore the stock market chaos. And now the stock market is dropping again because a rate increase is becoming likely again. Whether or not rates go up or down, the direction of the stock market seems to be controlled by emotion or big investors that have access to secret information. Retail investors like us seem to be powerless and doomed to just hold our stocks while waiting for a recovery that could take decades to occur.