The new market highs led the news yesterday, but the markets took a breather today. SPX closed unchanged at $2152 and RUT pulled back $5 to close at $1201. Volatility continued to contract with the VIX closing at 13.0%, down another half point. Trading volume has been at or below the 50 day moving average (dma) for the past eight trading sessions. Trading in the S&P 500 declined again today to 1.9 billion shares. trading volume decreased 15% on the NYSE and pulled back 11% on NASDAQ.

If we look at the longer term charts on SPX, RUT and NASDAQ composite, one thought is on many traders' minds: We've been trapped in this sideways market for several months; is this really a break-out or is this market just teasing us? Many of us have an almost automatic response to a rational, cause and effect explanation of the markets. We try to determine whether the price "makes sense". We look at price to earnings ratios, dividend yields and much more. But ultimately, the market price is correct. We may not understand it or it may not agree with our careful analysis, but it is what it is. An alternative approach is more statistical.

SPX has now gapped open at the first trade four days in succession. Today's open was very muted, but it was technically higher. But today ended the Russell 2000 Index's string of gap opens higher. The NASDAQ Composite's string of gap opens higher ended today and NASDAQ pulled back $17 to close at $5006. In fact, the all time high of NASDAQ at $5219 from last July remains unchallenged. If we apply the Bollinger bands to our price charts (plus and minus two standard deviations around the 20 dma), we would expect the index price to remain within the bands about 95% of the time, purely on a statistical basis. In fact, it works out just that way. Plot the Bollinger bands on your favorite stock or index and you will see what I mean. For the previous two days of trading, SPX was running right along the upper edge of the band. But SPX pulled back a bit today. RUT actually closed outside the upper edge of the band yesterday, but pulled back within the band today. NASDAQ matched SPX's price action, running right along the upper edge of the band, but pulling back today. We expect the small cap stocks in RUT to lead the market higher if, in fact, we are breaking out to a new bullish run. It is the classic "risk on" trade.

That's the positive case. But there are many negatives: BREXIT, a slowing economy in China, a couple of tepid GDP numbers for the U.S., and much uncertainty surrounding our presidential election.

What? You're waiting for the answer? Unfortunately, my crystal ball is as murky as yours. Those confident gurus on CNBC must know the secret, or at least they have mastered sounding confident. For me, I hedge positions as necessary, and slowly add bullish positions as I see the bullish strength of this market continue. But I remain cautious. We hit some relatively high numbers in December before we went over the cliff. Betting the farm on this bullish run is a good way to lose the farm.