The setup has been there for a while, but it took an exceptionally strong earnings report from Apple (AAPL) to finally trigger some more aggressive sell-the-news action.
The indices are rather misleading because AAPL is so dominant, but AAPL has faded steadily so far and breadth is struggling with just some minor strength in biotech and natural gas. Oil, banks, retails and precious metals are lagging.
There really are no themes working at the moment and the State of the Union address has already been forgotten as a possible catalyst. I see some random movement in various small-caps, but it's mostly just day trading for pennies right now.
There is always the potential the FOMC interest-rate news might shake things up, but market players are mostly just hanging back right now and waiting for developments
I have some smaller trades going in names like Human Genome Sciences (HGSI), Coffee Holding (JVA), Cal Drive International (DVR), Raptor Pharma (RPTP) and OCZ Technology (OCZ) and am digging for more, but I'm keeping things very tight and will be quick to exit. Until we have some resets it is going to be tough to be aggressive with time frames of more than a few days.
