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.

We are in the thick of earnings season, and so far the general trend has been as anticipated: modest if any top-line growth and more earnings beats than misses (albeit versus a low bar). But forward guidance has been the big decider on how the stock trades post-earnings, and the message has been decidedly mixed, as many companies have had to reduce guidance or otherwise failed to make the grade in other important growth metrics.

Last week was horrible, while today was quite good, albeit on low volume.  What happened?  Let’s review the facts.

Last week, the S&P 500 dropped over -4% to close Friday at the key support at 1295, off nearly -8% from its April high.  Mid-cap Growth was the worst style/cap, down -6.2%.  The best was Large-cap Value, off -4.3%.

When something is confusing or incomprehensible, a person might say, “It’s all Greek to me.” Well, that’s exactly what investors have been saying for the past several days—in the market’s inimitable way. Despite promising economic and corporate news in the U.S., the headline risk from Europe has been just too much to bear. It is keeping the bulls at bay, and front and center for an encore performance is Greece.