Hello everyone! Vacations are nice, but it's time to get back to work. The markets appeared to be rebounding at the open this morning, but then things turned dark. SPX hit its low for the day around 1:30 pm ET, but then traded up to about $2016 and gave us hope before turning downward to close at $2003, down $18 on the day. RUT followed suit, dropping $20 to close at $1161. Volatility increased to 21.3% on the VIX, up 1.4 points. The VIX ranged as high as 23% today before pulling back a bit. Both SPX and RUT ended the day with moderately long lower shadows on their candlesticks. This is hinting that we are closer to a bottom, but that is always hard to predict. I took a pass through the price charts of several stocks I trade and many of those charts were showing signs of either finding support or bouncing higher. Long lower candlestick shadows were common.

But that brings me back to wondering why the market is pulling back. Aren't lower oil prices good for almost everyone? The other scary goblin trotted out for us by the bears is Greece and their coming election. The only thing that worries me about Greece is that it may be a hint of coming attractions for us in this country: crushing debt, a preponderance of government bureaucrats, and a population that believes it is entitled to continued handouts.

Certainly, the core economic and employment data aren't strong and robust. But they aren't signaling recession either. The basic economy is strong, but we aren't seeing the strong creation of jobs to accelerate growth out of the recession. By most measures, the Standard and Poors 500 Index is modestly over-priced at worst. But these 5% and 10% pull backs in the market every few weeks are strange and don't seem to make much sense, at least not to me.

Trading volume continued to build today as people get back to work. 2.7 billion shares of the S&P 500 companies traded today, up significantly higher than the 50 dma at 2.0B. Trading on the NYSE increased 14% and trading volume increased 20% on NASDAQ. The ISM Services survey for December was released with a rating of 56.2, down from November's 59.3. Factory orders were unchanged in November with another decline of 0.7%. The FOMC minutes will be released tomorrow and the jobs report comes on Friday. Perhaps this data will stabilize the market.