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The market has leveled off a bit since the fabulous November rise. That’s okay. The market can’t go up that fast for long. It needed a breather and this is healthy. And the basic story still hasn’t changed.

The economy is already rebounding, and at a stronger pace than was expected. But it still has one arm tied behind its back with the remaining restrictions and lockdowns. Plus, with the indexes not far from all time highs, the market had likely risen as much as it was going to before the next phase of the recovery came into view.

September lived up to its bad reputation. The S&P 500 fell 4.8% for the month. But September is over. Now it’s October, which is historically only the second-worst month of the year. What now?

Over the summer, the strong economy prevailed over concerns about the virus. And the market drifted higher. We’ll see if the scales get tipped the other way in this historically tough month for the market.

It’s a crazy earnings season that the market is treating like a boring one. The second quarter marked the near-full opening up of the economy after the pandemic. It is compared to last year’s second quarter when the economy crashed amidst the lockdowns. Analysts are expecting average earnings growth of 74% for S&P 500 companies, one of the highest quarterly growth rates ever recorded. So far, earnings are exceeding those expectations. And the market is yawning it off. Stocks are doing the same thing as before earnings, trending slightly higher in an up and down fashion. What’s going on?

Things are still good in the market. The S&P 500 closed at yet another record high on Monday. That index is now up 19.27% so far in 2021 after managing to return 15.76% in pandemic-stricken 2020.

This market looks like it never wants to stop going higher. The S&P 500 just made yet another in a long series of new all-time highs.

It looks like the relentless bull market is finally running into trouble. The market indexes are down a lot for the third straight day.

After having eclipsed the September high in mid November, the S&P 500 is continuing to make a series of new all time highs.

Today is a big up day in the market after the worst week since October.

There’s good news. The S&P 500 has made a new all-time high. The Nasdaq achieved a new high on Monday. That’s the first new high for the tech-heavy index since early February.

One of the many market aphorisms that float around in my head says, “Never sell a dull market short.” It reminds us that in theory, low volume and calm trading ranges such as we’ve seen in the cannabis sector recently tend to signify a balance of buying and selling pressures, and thus a likelihood, particularly after the previous one-year decline, that the dullness will soon be replaced by a new uptrend.

After a half-hearted mid-week bounce, the stock market had another rough day yesterday. The S&P 500 fell almost 4%, and is now 10% off its all-time high. That means we’re now officially in a correction, although we didn’t really need yesterday to tell us that.

The market’s relentless march ever higher is being interrupted. What’s going on?

The market is hovering at a high level within bad breath distance of the all-time high. But that factoid is deceiving. The market really has not gone anywhere but sideways for about two months.

The market is down on the day, though individual stocks aren’t doing too badly. As of 2 pm EST, the Dow is off 280 points while the Nasdaq is off 165 points.

Energy and technology are no longer driving the market higher. As a result, the S&P 500 is kind of moving sideways.

The market continues to stumble sideways. On the one hand, the S&P 500 is within a whisker of the all-time high. On the other hand, stocks have been going sideways for about a month.

Earnings have been sensational. Reported earnings for S&P 500 companies have grown an average of 2% in the fourth quarter, compared to an expected -11%.

The second quarter ends today. GDP growth is forecasted to be 8.6% for the quarter, one of the best on record. Earnings for the S&P 500 is expected to grow over 60% over last year’s second quarter.