Its earnings season again!  Q2 results began today with a so-so report from Alcoa (AA), but they will end the week with much awaited reports from JP Morgan (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC).  To be fair, the market began the week on the tail end of a trio of bad stories, a not-so-dynamic duo of emerging stories from the banking sector, and a single focus on the upcoming election.

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.

Here we are again wondering what the market wants.  Today, it clearly wasn’t Technology stocks, as various issues dragged both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) lower.

After last week’s technical breakout on elevated volume, stocks have flattened and trading volume has waned as investors seem to be waiting to see whether there will be a pullback to test new support levels and the bulls’ conviction. I think the bulls are plenty convicted—not conflicted.

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