IBD officially declared this to be a "market in correction" on Friday. The market apparently heard about that and complied today with SPX losing $20 to close at $1845. RUT traded even weaker on a percentage basis, losing $18 to close at $1136. Volatility finally popped up a bit to 15.6%, up 1.6 points, but this still isn't really in correction territory for volatility. At the low of the February pull back, VIX was over 21%, and VIX hit 18.2% just a couple of weeks ago on March 14th.

RUT broke support at $1147 today, the high from December. The next support level is the high from November at $1123, and then the grand daddy of targets for a correction would be the February 5th low at $1083. RUT now stands at a 6% pull back from its March 4th high. RUT traded down more strongly than SPX again today with a decline of 1.6%, compared to SPX's 1.1% decline. SPX has a strong support band at $1840 to $1850, and the 50 dma is at $1839. SPX landed right in the middle of that band today after trading as low as $1841. If it breaks through $1840 tomorrow, this could get ugly (or uglier).

We saw several short lived pull backs last year, but SPX and RUT ran more in parallel. This pull back has been principally in RUT and the NASDAQ thus far. And trading volume moderated today. Trading in the S&P 500 was about the same as Friday with 2.6 billion shares, but trading on the NYSE was only up 4% and trading volume on NASDAQ declined 3%.

So far, this has appeared to be a sell-off associated with taking profits in the high fliers of the past year. Heaven help us if we get some market-rattling news. Market psychology has turned.