Kass: 20 Takeaways From the Fed's Move

This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on Dec. 12 at 7:26 a.m. EST.

Twenty points to take away from the Fed's rate decision Tuesday afternoon.

1. Strap yourselves in for the ride of your life with Mr. Market.

2. Keep investment and trading positions small in order to take advantage of opportunities in a market that has no memory from day to day.

3. Too many market participants worship at the altar of price momentum. (Don't blame the Fed for investors' complacency.)

4. Most of the media and most investors who "talk their books" in the media are permabulls. Take their views with a grain of salt.

5. The same applies to permabears. Take their views with a grain of salt also.

6. Ignore eroding fundamentals (e.g., tightening financial conditions as manifested in Libor and the TED spread, signs of weakening capital spending and a looming worldwide recession) at your own financial risk.

7. The Fed does not exist for the purpose of encouraging speculators.

8. The Fed recognizes the real threat of inflation -- that the nominal CPI/PPI rates are increasingly a more representative statistic than the core CPI/PPI rates. (Watch for elevated inflation releases later this week.)

9. The Fed recognizes (as I do) that interest rates are a blunt instrument in remedying the credit crisis. The Fed will likely respond with a more creative solution sooner rather than later.

10. Economic cycles have not been repealed, as the bullish mantra of a Goldilocks economy (another new paradigm predicated on uninterrupted growth and free of inflation) is absurd. The economy is not "the greatest story never told"; it is "the greatest story ever sold."