Today was the beginning of “spring break” for the market.  At least it seemed that way with a very low trading volume of only 600M shares on the NYSE.  Either the college crowd does more trading than we imagined or parents are taking the week off as well.

After a requisite knee-jerk selloff, stock market bulls shook off Russia’s military action in Ukraine and Crimea as just another buying opportunity. Even adding the Russian Bear to their arsenal couldn’t give bears the upper hand for long. The S&P 500 large cap index set yet another all-time intraday high and closed at a new record high on Friday.

Today brought three better than expected economic releases from Construction Spending, ISM Manufacturing, and Personal Income. The ISM figure was quite unexpected and Personal Income was well above expectations.  If we ignore for a moment that the Final GDP reading for Q4 was lowered on Friday (which may or may not have been primarily caused by severe weather), we have had a week of better than expected economic numbers.

Facing formidable resistance and the threat of an ominous triple-top sell signal if bulls lost their battle, U.S. stocks appear to have successfully navigated a critical crossroads by finding the wherewithal to break out to new highs, with blue skies above. Among the ten U.S. business sectors, the performance leaders last week were Consumer Services, Consumer Goods, Industrial, and Financial.

The market's major equity indices were all up a little more than 0.6% yesterday, which was off mid-day highs, but positive because the market shrugged off poor economic news from China. Today, the market stayed relatively even, with the S&P 500 ending down slightly by -0.13%.

Stocks continue to consolidate just under their prior high, which is offering formidable resistance. Although many long-standing uncertainties have significantly subsided, others have arisen, including turmoil in a new global hot spot (Ukraine) and the disruptions to the economy caused by the unusually long and brutal winter experienced by most of the U.S.

Last week, stocks continued their rebound from the edge of the abyss. Investors responded positively to a dovish combination of comments from Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen. Mr. Boehner said he would not pursue another acrimonious battle over the debt ceiling. And Ms.

Monday’s market was marginal through most of the day, but all major indices ended the day in positive territory, led by the Nasdaq.  It was the market’s third positive close in a row and the fourth in the last five days. The S&P 500 ended the day at 1799.84, less than 3% from its all-time closing high of 1844.46.  It is now nearly 60 points above its recent low on February 3 (about a 6% drop from its high). 

Stocks provided a volatile and sweat-inducing ride last week in what many investors and traders thought might be the big selloff that so many have been predicting. Although the market tends to follow a path that fools the greatest number of people, sometimes it behaves in a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Today, the market continued its tortuous path of the last two weeks, falling sharply virtually the entire day with the DJI ending down 326 points, the S&P 500 down 2.3% (it’s worst day since June 20, 2013), and the NASDAQ down 2.6%.  We are now down about 6% from the S&P 500’s high on January 15.  A drop of 10% is generally thought of as correction, so we have another 4% or so to fall.