NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Amble into your grocery store to buy a dozen eggs and you'll find that they're differentiated along a number of lines: What size eggs they are, whether they're commercial or organic and, of course, whether they're white or brown. And all of those things affect the price.

But we know that that last item, color, shouldn't affect the price at all. It doesn't make any sense at all that brown eggs cost more than white eggs, just as it didn't make any sense in another era when white cost more than brown. People imagine they are getting something -- better health one supposes -- that really isn't there. Just like tech.

Technology continues to be the most expensive area of the market, and it is a struggle to see why. Over the past five years, tech stocks in the S&P 500 have had an average annual earnings contraction of 13 percent, and yet the stocks trade at 40 times the past year's earnings -- by leaps and bounds the heftiest price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P sectors.

In contrast, take a look at the sectors that have had the best earnings growth over the past five years. Health care stocks had average annual earnings growth of 10 percent and carry a P/E of 20.3, consumer staples stocks had 13 percent earnings growth and have a P/E of 17.7, energy stocks had 15 percent earnings growth and have a P/E of 16.

It seems like, despite all the disappointments of the last few years, investors still want to believe that tech is far and away the best place to find growth, while they've concluded at the same time that the places that have delivered earnings growth in the past (and in the case of consumer staples and healthcare, stable growth) aren't particularly worthwhile.

They could end up with egg on their faces.

Swimming pools worth of ink and Hindenberg portions of hot air have been spent discussing whether the Fed will cut the funds rate by a quarter or a half point when it concludes its two-day meeting Wednesday. But Merrill Lynch chief U.S. strategist Rich Bernstein reckons that the magnitude of the cut is immaterial compared to what it is telling us: That the economy remains in very sorry shape and the potential for deflation is very much there.

Bernstein believes the real signal that it's time to buy stocks may be when it becomes clear that the Fed is going to raise rates. First, he notes, that would indicate that the threat of deflation had receded. Second, it would mean that the economy was no longer running along on cheap credit, but had made the transition to sustainable recovery, where employment improves and business spending returns to steady growth.

Since the Fed has, as part of its effort to get the economy moving again, indicated that it isn't planning to raise rates again any time soon, Bernstein could be in for a long wait.