To no one’s surprise, the Fed decided not to raise rates yesterday. At the same time, however, it managed to hint about as strongly as it ever has that a rate increase is coming by the end of the year.

Yesterday we discussed the possibility of the Federal Reserve raising rates, and what that might mean for markets. Right now, markets are largely trading on what policymakers are doing—which is to say, interest rates—and as policy normalizes, so, too, should markets. In a normal market, shares will be priced off of earnings, rather than the latest comment from a Fed official.

Today is the start of the regular meeting of the Federal Reserve, which is tasked with managing the U.S. economy. The way it usually does this is by setting base interest rates, which the rest of the financial system keys off of. In recent years, the Fed has also used other methods—notably, buying bonds to reduce interest rates even further than the usual tools would allow.

Last week gave us some clarity over whether the consumer will continue to lead economic growth and whether the manufacturing sector is as bad as the surveys suggest. Unfortunately, most of the data came in below expectations, showing that while the recovery continues, there is little evidence of any acceleration this quarter.

With market turbulence continuing today and questions pouring in, I am struck once again by the core issue we’re wrestling with here: the time horizon problem. Although we get meaningful results in the long term, we often feel compelled to react in the short term. 

I’ve been traveling this week, spending a day in Washington talking with the press and then speaking this morning at the Financial Planning Association conference. These trips are always useful in that I get a chance to bounce ideas off a lot of people in the real world. They can also be surprising. Not so much in the questions I’m asked—people are worried about the economy, worried about the markets, wondering what’s next—but in what comes out of my mouth when I answer them.

In one of the most encouraging headlines we’ve seen recently, the median U.S. household income rose in 2015 by the most since the mid-1960s.

After months of relative calm in the financial markets, we’ve seen big bounces over the past several days, down and up and down again this morning. What’s going on?

There was only one major economic report last week, but the data it presented was a very big negative surprise. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, which tracks the service sector, was released on Tuesday and showed a decline from 55.5 to 51.4—a six-year low and significantly worse than the expected small drop to 54.9.

The big news as I write this is that the stock market is down more than 1 percent. That translates to more than 200 points for the Dow, 30 points for the S&P 500, and 80 points for the Nasdaq.

Looking at the screen, I see nothing but red. Ouch.