Almost on cue, the market Gods gave the baton to the bears today to wipe out yesterday's gains. SPX lost $12 to close at $1873. RUT closed down $17 at $1098. Significantly, both indexes remain above key support levels. SPX bounced off the 50 dma at $1868 and RUT bounced off the February low at $1093. RUT remains below its 200 dma. Trading volume increased today with 1.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading, but this remains below the 50 dma at 2.2 billion shares. Trading on the NYSE rose 13% and trading volume on NASDAQ increased 12%. The VIX increased a half point to 13%.

For the past several weeks, RUT and the NASDAQ composite have traded much weaker than the SPX and the DJIA. NASDAQ closed down $29 today at $4097, but is still well above the 200 dma at $4007 and the solid support around $3998 established by lows in mid-December, early February and mid-April.

Market watchers blamed remarks by some of the FOMC members for the decline, and one has to wonder if someone will find something remarkable in the FOMC minutes that will be released tomorrow. I doubt that, but I didn't think that Plosser or Dudley's comments today gave us any new information either. Maybe it is another case of "we have to explain the market's move somehow".

The market continues to basically trade sideways in a pretty tight range. Trading volume should begin to decline later this week in anticipation of the long weekend.