Not much you can make of such a sloppy choppy day with the SPX in a tight 10-15 pt range. A possible positive is this market may finally have some formidable support at 860, it bounced many times here throughout the day. But, we've been through this before recently at higher levels only to see a level such as the 50MA blown through easily. So, the guard must remain up, choopy slop can turn to mud quite quickly!
Overall, it seems everything that started this rally back on Nov 21 is screwing with the market in one way or another from the Geithner nomination (housekeeper) to the stimulus ( push back date) to TARP (revisions) all making some kind of negative noise. Doesn't seem like much, but the market maybe adding all these things up and asking can you do anything right?.
We did see some of the bounces in the beaten down commodity stocks just discussed yesterday, energy was positive in the S&P leading to a higher $CRX/ CRB. Still, this is mostly a one day up, one day down trade starting from overnight $USD/ crude prices and getting any thoughts of a strong position for more than 24-48hrs is almost useless. Also, DOE inventory Wednesday to watch.
As far as what looked like a safe sector/earnings story (APOL) got Citron'd. Not dwelling into the specifics of report, only think this is maybe more than Citron can chew. Most of their victims have been very small fish with little institutional support (basically unknown retail plays). APOL is a much bigger fish with institutional interest at about 80% with 15-17 analysts doing coverage. This is probably why the stock finished only 5% down on such a high vol. turnover.
Anyways, patiance is needed here in the broad markets as this is either a low here and we start to bounce within this recent range or the market becomes mud soon. A closer watch on Euro mkts now as a lead to trading here throughout the day, their banks are muddying the waters, noted Deutsche Bank/ UBS the other day as negative noise.