As is usually the case, when milestone levels are broken, the markets took a pause yesterday as mixed news did not provide enough of an impetus for the bulls to drive the major indexes higher.
As the chart above shows (courtesy of marketwatch.com), the S&P; 500 trended within a five point range and closed slightly lower.
Some contributing factors to the sideways activity were violent outbursts in Egypt and miserable weather conditions in parts of the U.S. Nevertheless, the markets remained fairly resilient despite no shortage of opinions that a major correction is about to occur.
ADPs announcement of strong private sector growth was taken in stride as those numbers (187,000 jobs added in January), have not been an accurate reflection in the past as to how Friday’s unemployment report will turn out.