I enjoy roller coasters and fast cars, but I really don't care for that type of excitement in my finances. SPX opened this morning and shrugged off the weaker GDP number and proceeded to climb all day, hitting its high at $1868 early in afternoon trading, but then plunged to its low of the day at $1848 just after 3 pm ET - a $20 drop in about 90 minutes!  In the last 45 minutes of trading, SPX recovered much of the earlier loss and closed at $1859, up $5 on the day. RUT behaved similarly, but wasn't able to recover the afternoon losses. RUT closed down $5 at $1183. Volatility ran both up and down throughout the day, but ended unchanged with the VIX at 14%. Trading volume was up strongly with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading today. Trading volume rose 13% on the NYSE and increased 22% on NASDAQ.

The latest revision to the fourth quarter GDP number dropped from the earlier +3.2% to +2.4% - a big drop, but at least it is still in growth mode. The Chicago PMI came in flat for February at 59.8 and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey rose a bit in February to 81.6 from 81.2. Pending home sales increased 0.1% in January, a big improvement from December's 5.8% drop.

This market is certainly bullish on virtually any measure, but it remains nervous. The hesitation over the past couple of weeks before SPX was able to break out to new highs is one data point. Today's sell-off going into the weekend is a second data point.

 I am going to put this week behind me and take my honey out to dinner. I recommend you do the same.