Market Preview: All About Apple

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- It's summertime but the livin' is far from easy on Wall Street again this year.

Monday's steep sell-off turned out much better than it seemed it would during the ugliest moments of the morning's swoon. Nothing much changed in those few hours but it is at least a little heartening that investors were out there willing to jump into equities despite the murky backdrop presented by so many lingering problems.

There's Greece's austerity problem, Spain's yield problem, China's growth problem, just to name a few. The quarterly equivalent of a soggy fry from McDonald's(MCD) gave investors a clear view of how all these problems are rapidly becoming everyone's problem as few blue chips will be able to thrive and lend support to the slow domestic recovery if they are getting squeezed overseas as well.

Up until Friday, of course, things were starting to brighten up. In commentary early Monday. Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, offered up his explanation.

"We think that much of the recent advance of equity prices since the early June low in the face of slowing global economic growth, weakening corporate earnings increases and faltering investor confidence can be summed up in two words: anticipated stimulus," he wrote. "From China, many are looking for interest rate cuts and a reduction in the reserve requirement ratio. In Europe, expectations are for additional rate cuts and larger bailout packages. Here in the U.S., there appears to be an endless stream of debate on a possible third round of quantitative easing (QE3). The discussion does not surround 'if,' but 'when.'"

That view provides some perspective on what a dangerous game policy makers have landed in. Everyone has a different agenda but ostensibly is working toward the same goal. Each time events take a turn for the worse on one front or the other, the investor reaction is somewhat balanced out by the idea that a stimulus solution will arrive to save the day. The flaw, of course, is that by the time conditions get bad enough to justify turning the spigot back on it may be too late.