This chart might help to understand why we've had such choppy sideways movement in recent weeks.
SPX Weekly Pitchforks:
The green pitchfork delineates the uptrend from March 2009. You can see that price obeyed the median line of the fork pretty well during the uptrend, which is what its supposed to do. However, the drop from April 2010 has taken it down to the lower line of the fork - the fact that its moved away from the median line is a sign that the trend marked by the fork may be over.
Indeed, a new red fork seems to have been established and price now seems to be oscillating above and below, but mostly below, its median line. The median line should provide resistance to price, if the fork is valid.
There's obviously a battle going on as price tries to stay within the bullish green fork but now has the bearish red fork to contend with.
With price below the weekly moving averages shown on the chart and all of those averages, except the 50 declining, you would expect the red fork to win out. Price doesn't have to do much to break the green fork and while it can easily just ride the lower line of the green fork up, it has a lot of work to do to get back to the median line to re-assert the uptrend.
However, the position of the indicators is such that further upward price action isn't out of the question, so the bearish case is by no means certain, though it may be encouraging to the bearish case that the RSI (14) seems to be unable to get above 50 and the CCI (144) has, so far, been unable to get above the zero line, despite some significant rallies.
This may be worth keeping an eye on.
