The stock market has been on cruise control for the holidays, with the bulls teasing the bears occasionally but giving little back. Powered by the Fed’s cash machine, the SPY has continued on its strong December path. The market is now in blue sky territory, and not even China interest rate hikes and lower consumer confidence readings can stop it.

The bulls continue to steamroll bears during December, despite closing November with ominous weakness. Powered by the Fed, the SPY bounced convincingly from strong support at 118 and has not looked back, even powering through November resistance at 123 with only a brief pause to reload.

On Tuesday, the market lost support at Nasdaq 2500 after losing S&P 500 1200 last week, and then threatened to breakdown below the psychologically important Dow 11,000. But alas, one bad day does not confirm a trend change, and today (Wednesday) was the exact opposite.

The market is finally giving us the long anticipated and overdue pullback. This is good for its longer term health. The media is attributing the weakness to news out of Ireland, but the fact is that the technical picture has been screaming for a pullback and retest of key support levels, including Dow 11,000.

The resolution of uncertainty last week around the elections and FOMC announcement allowed the market to release some pent-up energy and finally break out of its consolidation pattern. After the normal head fakes in both directions, it rallied hard such that the S&P 500 reached a 2-year closing high.

The market continues to dwell in a zone of consolidation in a virtual tug-of-war between the bulls & bears. Bears think the market needs to prove itself by testing key support levels and working off its overbought technical indicators.