RealMoney

Boxes being checked. The VIX is down, not enough, but it is going down.

Caterpillar (CAT) and Boeing (BA) , the two Dow leaders, are flying. They are incredibly important.

Rates are tame. You want a real rip-snorter, you get rates down. Not yet. But can you imagine?

Oil is up, so necessary because the algos seem to freak out when oil goes down in price.

The consumer product stories like Kimberly-Clark (KMB) and Action Alerts PLUS holding PepsiCo (PEP) are recovering although the real test will be Tuesday when PEP reports.

The semiconductors are finally acting better although the leadership is murky given that Nvidia (NVDA) is being pancaked by reports that Amazon (AMZN) is developing its own machine-learning chips. Amazon is said to be a big customer of Nvidia (another Action Alerts PLUS holding).

It would be terrific to see the stock of Texas Instruments (TXN) , which has become an important bellwether doing better. Same with Universal Display, or (OLED) . Both have been real dogs.

Still early but when boxes are checked, it's good news for the bulls.