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Stocks rallied in spite of, or maybe because of, some lackluster economic reports including weaker than expected retail sales. The Dow gained 178-points, the S&P 500 gained 1%, while the small caps, and particularly the Nasdaq, were up over 1%.

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Stocks spent most of the day in positive territory on Wednesday, but by mid-afternoon we saw the indices drift lower ending the day mixed with the Dow down 32-points, the S&P 500 and small caps basically flat, while the Nasdaq had a strong day gaining 19-points with the help of Apple's recent resurgence over the last few days despite the market's weakness.

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Stocks pulled back again, testing Monday and Friday's lows as the Dow lost 258-points. The investment world is in turmoil over whether the Fed is going to raise interest rates next week, and although a 0.25% hike would not be the end of the world, the concern is whether the accommodative Central Banks across the world are starting to get less accommodating, and that's something the stock market has been feeding on for years.

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Stocks opened lower on Monday morning, following Friday's big sell-off, but we quickly saw capitulation-like action and the sellers exhausted themselves opening the door for a rebound. The Dow gained 240-points on the day. It didn't get back all of the 394-points it lost on Friday, but it was a good start. There is overhead resistance on the charts where the indices had broken down from, and that's the next challenge.

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Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Eric Rosengren suggested that a September rate hike might still be possible in September and clearly the stock market had a problem with that. Add this to the ECB's decision last week to keep rates at current levels, instead of cutting them, and investors ran scared and we had ourselves a near 400-point decline in the Dow with the losses between 2% and 3% across the board.

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