Over the past 5 trading days, all airline stocks have exhibited downward momentum. While most of the carriers were in news over regulatory disputes, JetBlue Airways celebrated the event of its one millionth customers connecting to its high-speed Fly-Fi system.

Stocks were able to leverage some optimistic news and dovish words from the Fed to take another stab at an upside breakout attempt last week.

Stocks continue to hold up like troopers even though bulls have lost some traction, perhaps due to a combination of the summer doldrums and overbought technical conditions that have them biding time until the next setup for a run at new highs.

Rather than a Great Rotation from bonds into equities, the rotation instead has been from growth into value. Among the ten U.S. business sectors, uber-defensive sector Utilities is still the clear leader year-to-date, up more than +10%, followed by Energy and Healthcare.

The airline sector was looking pretty strong thanks to more fuel efficient planes, lower competition, and higher demand for air travel. However, many were worried that the recent batch of bad weather would ground this rally and send airline stocks lower.

The strongest index of the day was the Russell 2000, up 1.8%, followed by the S&P 500, up 0.8%, and the NASDAQ, up 0.7%. NYSE volume was a strong 810 million.