NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - It's not fear that's getting to Wall Street nowadays so much as exhaustion.

Three years of stock market declines and economic stagnation would be bad enough in their own right, but now investors must also deal with the threat of war against Iraq. President Bush said this and State Secretary Colin Powell said that, Turkey may or may not allow U.S. troops, North Korea is rattling its saber, the Security Council is squabbling, oil has shot higher, Britain is pushing a compromise and on and on.

Tracking the markets Unemployment on the rise Merrill now expect Fed rate cut The risk in oil CBO forecat: $1.8 trillion in deficits

It's become a sort of endless drone, and no, it doesn't look like it will get any better in the week ahead. (For a line-up of key events, click here.) The only really real point of clarity that's come from it is an understanding that making predictions about what comes next is a mug's game.

Investors have retreated to the sidelines, and trading volume has dried up. In January, total average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq was 9 percent below where it was in January 2003. In February it was down 17 percent. Most years, even in bad markets, volume increases.

It is, in popular parlance, a buyers' strike, where nobody shows any enthusiasm for the market, and stocks just gutter along. A sickening situation. But it isn't just buyers that are exiting the market, points out Raymond James chief market analyst Ralph Bloch, but sellers.

"What we're seeing in this steady decline in volume is a market that's running out of sellers," he said. "But the war has psychologically been keeping a lid on the buyers. If this war is short, fast and sweet, and I think it will be, that could be a catalyst to get stocks going again."

Short and fast -- that's what most people expect, but just because it's what they expect doesn't mean they're going to do anything about it. Monday is the third anniversary of the Nasdaq top, and maybe what people have learned since then is that buying into the teeth of the bear may seem like a good thing in theory, but it can be extremely painful in practice.

The odds still seem to point toward an eventual war against Iraq and it appears that little in the coming week will change that. On Thursday the United States and Britain are expected to put their proposed resolution authorizing force against Saddam Hussein to the U.N. Security Council. France appears ready to veto that resolution.

Investors would prefer, if war is to come, that it be backed by the United Nations. Otherwise, the United States will bear the brunt of the cost of not only war, but rebuilding Iraq. And the rifts that have grown between the United States and many other countries will only deepen.

Even then, thinks Bank of America Securities equity portfolio strategist Tom McManus, the market may take war easily, once it begins. "There's a good chance that once the war starts, should it be necessary, that the market's focal point will extend beyond the end of the war," he said.

Investors will begin to mull, again, the raft of tax-cuts President Bush is proposing, and in view of that, stocks could rise. "The package is very stimulative," he said. "It's like a quadruple skim latte."

For some bearish investors, however, it seems like the market is in trouble no matter what.

"Our philosophy is real simple: War or no war, the economy sucks," said Gary Kaminsky, managing director of the asset management group at Neuberger & Berman. "At the end of this year we'll see that the majority of companies have overpromised and underperformed."

Kaminsky has been visiting with a lot of companies over the last three weeks and he says that many were reporting a sharp drop off in business starting in mid-February. That's consistent with many of the readings on the economy that have come out recently, likethe sharp drop in confidence, the worse-than-expected ISM manufacturing survey and the sharp drop in jobs. February was a lousy month.

That economic data in the week ahead should only reinforce this. The February retail sales report, due out Tuesday, looks like it will come in soft. Industrial production figures, due out Friday, look to be weak as well.

It's not a sign that the economy is on the cusp of a fresh downturn, said Salomon Smith Barney economist Steven Wieting. Rather, the economy is just muddling along weakly -- which, unfortunately, makes it vulnerable to shock. Like everybody else, economists are waiting it out on Iraq.

"If you can tell me where the next move in oil prices is going to be -- up to $60 a barrel or down to $20 -- I can tell you what the economy is going to do," said Wieting.

• Tuesday wholesale inventories for January get released. Inventories have been falling, which cuts into current growth but can also set the stage for stronger growth going forward. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expect inventories grew 0.3 percent versus December's 0.8 percent
• Wednesday brings the January trade balance with economists expecting a deficit of $44.9 billion versus December's $44.2 billion deficit.
• Thursday retail sales for February get reported. Security concerns and a big blizzard on the East coast did some damage. Economists think sales fell by 0.2 percent compared with January's 0.9 percent decline. Exclude autos, and sales look to come in even versus a 1.3 percent gain in December.
• The government's report on inflation at the wholesale level comes out Thursday. Economists expect the Producer Price Index gained 0.7 percent in February after jumping 1.6 percent in January. That's mostly an oil story -- take out the volatile food and energy sectors and the PPI is expected to gain 0.1 percent versus 0.9 percent in January.
• January business inventories, due out on Thursday, are expected to rise 0.2 percent versus December's 0.9 percent gain.
• Thursday looks like the likely date for a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution authorizing force against Iraq.
• Friday's report on industrial production is expected to show a gain of just 0.2 percent in February versus January's 0.7 percent gain. Capacity utilization is expected to stay at 75.7 percent.
• Economists expect the University of Michigan's preliminary read on its sentiment index. At the end of February it came in at 79.9.