With plenty of wind in their sails, bulls coasted comfortably into year-end to close out 2013 with a stellar performance, as Santa made his widely-expected appearance on Wall Street. In fact, stocks saw one of their best years ever and the strongest since 1997, with the S&P 500 boasting a total return around 30% while closing the year right at its all-time high.

Well, Fed Chairman Bernanke has proved me wrong by dipping his toe into the dreaded tapering of QE3. In retrospect, I suppose he preferred to take this first step on his own rather than put the onus (and any associated fallout) on the back on his successor.

Backed by positive economic announcements from the Empire Manufacturing Index and Industrial Production, along with much improved growth from Europe, the market broke its string of four losing sessions with the S&P gaining 0.6% and the recently weak Russell 2000 up a sturdy 1.2%. Virtually all sectors did well, led by Energy, Industrials and Financials.  Energy was up by more than 1%.

The stock market’s technical consolidation continues, and in fact anyone who missed last week’s entry point for the widely-anticipated year-end rally is getting another shot at it. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials both lost round-number support again this week at 1800 and 16,000, after briefly recovering them from last week’s pullback.

Today, with very little market moving news, the S&P 500 closed at 1808.4, yet another new closing daily high.  The index did touch the 1811 area on at least three distinctly different time slots creating a new resistance level.  But after last week’s bevy of positive economic surprises, the sharp gain of 1.1% on Friday, leaving the index just a tiny point away from its ninth consecutive up week, we can’t be too quick to suggest today was a topping ral

As the charts last week indicated might happen, the S&P 500 has fallen four straight days and failed to hold its breakout above 1800 while the Dow Jones Industrials lost 16,000. Only the NASDAQ is still holding on to its breakout above 4000. Although the Basic Materials sector was the leader on Wednesday, the Technology sector was strong, as well, and in fact Tech stocks have been the strongest over the past week and the past month.

Repeating Friday’s market performance, today, the S&P 500 sold off in the last 30 to 40 minutes, giving up its entire daily gain for a loss of 0.27%.  Nevertheless, it did gain 0.1% last week for its eighth consecutive weekly gain. 

As stock traders take a break for Thanksgiving, all the major averages have hit new highs after breaking through psychological resistance levels, including the S&P 500 at 1800, Dow Jones Industrials at 16,000, and NASDAQ at 4000. Tech stocks were the big leaders on Wednesday after a strong earnings report from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Today, Thanksgiving week was greeted with a marginally up day by the markets with the NASDAQ reaching a new high of 4007 before falling back below 4000 to close up nearly 3 points at 3995.57.  The S&P 500 reached a new all-time high at 1808.58 before ending the day down a little over 2 points at 1802.48.

“Stocks fall on Fed taper discussion.” That’s the gist of what you heard in the media on Wednesday to account for the market’s late-day pullback. There’s always some sort of attempt to explain daily market action. But the reality is that investors simply must take a periodic breather to regroup and retrench, particularly when making an assault on round-number resistance for a major index.