This week played host to a couple of the most anxiously-awaited bits of news since the August NFP report. First, the German constitutional court ruled on the European Stability Mechanism (it’s constitutional!) and second, the world’s biggest company, Apple, officially released the new iPhone (it’s a phone!).

But of course, these were just a prelude to the big story everyone was waiting for – today’s QE3 announcement from the Fed. The decision to move ahead with QE3 was no surprise to many, yet stocks still bounced higher on the news, and metals jumped even more – with gold and silver leading the way.  What ever happened to the old market cliché, buy the rumor, and sell the fact? It looks like the new paradigm is buy the rumor, and buy the fact.  Really, though: how many months has this move been expected? Stocks have been on a fairly solid upward trend since the beginning of June, but for now it looks like investors (aka machines running algorithms) are saying that move didn’t price in QE3 completely.

Is this time around different? Usually not when people throw that statement around. But the Fed is committing to an open-ended purchase of $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month. In other words, Bernanke has declared that the beatings will continue until morale improves. So, perhaps the stock market is pricing in QE3 through QE5 or so.

Regardless of whether you think this was a good decision or a huge mistake, the movement in the stock market since the Fed started unloading its full arsenal in 2009 reminds us to pay heed to another one of those old clichés: “don’t fight the Fed.”