While day traders can embrace this up/down, up/down market, it makes swing traders dizzy. Frankly, I hate it and so does my account; and trading light, or not trading at all is my preferred approach in this type of market. While fundamentalists claim this back and forth action is caused by the ever changing news environment, as a technical analyst I know it is because the SPX is trapped by the 200 DEMA. The 200 DEMA (or DSMA, doesn’t really matter) is the line-in-the-sand for the epic battle between Bulls and Bears. Above the line live the Bulls, below the line live the Bears, and around SPX 200 is the battle ground with enough land mines to blow a swing trader’s account. The 200 is where the big institutions and hedge fund focus much of their buying and selling, and the battle goes on until one side wins and price moves far enough away so that they have to commit in size to a direction. So while the 200 acts like a magnet (for indexes and stocks), pulling price to it in either direction, once it is soundly breached, a trend develops. My guess is that this up/down action continues until the Bollinger Bands come together in a squeeze, then we emerge in a solid move. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell at this point which direction we trend. Good luck, keep your helmet strapped, and save firepower for the trend move.