It seems that it was a long time ago when $SPX probed below 1290 as a downside breakout attempt.  Yet it was only two weeks ago.  That potential breakout proved to be false, as all breakouts have so far this year.  After a strong one-day rally, $SPX has probed the upside several times but has failed to either trade above 1318 or close above 1313.  So that is now upside resistance.  Meanwhile, there is a lot of support, the most notable of which is the 1290-1295 area, which has been traversed repeatedly in the last month.  Even if $SPX does break out, can it be trusted?  Probably not.

Figure 1 shows not only the trading range, but also the rising channel -- a more bullish technical pattern.  That is perhaps the more significant one, and the one on which traders can concentrate on selling at the top of the channel and buying at the bottom.  This further strengthens the argument that 1290 is support.  On the upside, if $SPX can ever close above 1313, say, it should be able to run to the upper edge of the channel, which is now near 1330.

The equity-only put-call ratios are both on buy signals.   The weighted ratio has doggedly remained there since the end of March.  The standard ratio momentarily slipped to a sell signal, but returned to a buy. There is one potential problem here, though, and that is the fact that the weighted ratio has moved to a fairly low point on the chart (i.e., it's overbought).  It is more susceptible to rolling over to a sell signal from these levels.

Market breadth has been rather poor, although on that one big up day it was spectacularly good.  On several days recently when the broad market advanced rather strongly, breadth was poor (as it was today, Thursday).

Finally, $VIX has gone into virtual "lockdown."  It has only changed by pennies on each of the last three days.  That is not predictive of anything.

In summary, it looks like $SPX will remain range-bound for the short term -- until it can break out of the recent trading range or, more importantly, violate the extremes of its bullish channel.