Today's action amounted to a bit of a non-event. Tight price action was combined with low volume. The quiet action did little to change the broader picture, or the technical health of the indices.

The only point of interest in the S&P was the increasing disparity in relative strength between the S&P and Russell 2000.

While indices continued their advance for the week, it was market breadth which made the biggest improvement.

The Percentage of Nasdaq Stocks above the 50-day MA rose to 62%, leaving it on course to test resistance from late 2010, currently around 70%.

The Nasdaq Bullish Percents also crossed the 50% halfway mark. Declining resistance for this index is around the 55% mark.

With the S&P 500 ending EXACTLY the same as the year before -1257.6 - it signified the boring end to 2011; many of the Indicators regressed to the mean on low Volume, with the VIX at 23. Some relative extremes did include the Inv.Intell. Bulls at 50+%; my records show a 62.9% high in Dec. of '04. AAII Bulls jumped to 40% - must be the champagne! A small number of funds flowed out of equity funds into MMFs, but the ETFs remained almost unchanged month/month.
Here are closing numbers for 2011:

Date>

As the old saying goes (Observable, but not Actionable) : So goes the first week of January - so goes the month; so goes January, so goes the year! Of course, a la the Heisenberg principle - since the year contains the month, it has a nice running start.

Nothing fancy for the week, just steady gains for indices.  These gains keep in play the rally from October. Market breadth continued to improve alongside index gains. Certain market breadth indicators are at declining resistance dating back to 2010, important tests, because breach these and the rallies will be well placed to continue for the next few weeks (if not months).