Nothing goes up in a straight line, not even during the holidays, so a near-term market pullback would be a healthy way to prevent a steeper correction in January.

Not only did the large caps finally shows some vulnerability, but small caps are now looking like they are in a full-blown correction from their highs reached back in July.

Stocks saw elevated volume and volatility last week, and the 100-day simple moving average on the S&P 500 proved to be the proverbial line-in-the-sand for bullish investors.

More unnerving conflicts around the globe have flared up, but as usual, U.S. equity investors have given it nary a yawn as they seem to have become pretty much numb to the steady stream of unwelcome news, particularly out of the Middle East.

Whatever happened to the “Great Rotation?” You remember the predictive theory that ultra-low yields would encourage investors to rotate out of bonds and into stocks.

On Friday momentum stocks sold off with some verve again after the release of the payrolls data. Since the latter were actually quite close to the expected number, they cannot really have been the trigger of the sell-off (in other words, it would probably have happened regardless of the data).