Discussion About What's to Come

I'm actutely aware that this is all speculative but I'm interested in a discussion/other people's thoughts on the next couple months/rest of 2023.

7 months into the year and we've had 6 green months so far (assuming July doesn't take a turn for the worse here in the latter half). I hardly find that sustainable with the state of how things are currently. What's the catalyst for a change in direction or keeping the status quo?

Understanding the past cannot predict the future but also imo it would be foolish to ignore the past....

1) I remembered reading an article a few months back that said (and I'm paraphrasing) that the S&P 500 on averages raises ~10% after the last rate hike. Is this the where we are today? Yes Powell said there are more hikes to come but minds have changed in the past.

2) This made me curious on how the market correlates to rate decreases as that's eventually in our "nearish" (interpret that how you'd like). From what I'm seeing, generally the market decreases as interest rates decrease as well (I'm looking at the fed funds effective rate chart on the St Louis fed website). I don't see this as the market is decreasing because the fed funds rate is but rather there is/are other determintal things happening in the economy (potentially from rates being too high) that's causing the rate to be lowered and also the market.

So where do you think we stand in the present?