The performance so far this week has been typical of summer time coming towards an end. As the kids get back to school here in the states, the markets are historically very uneventful. The good news is that this will end soon and with a special, election year ahead of us, volatility is just around the corner. The bad news is that active traders and those with a lot of cash left on the sidelines has very little in the way of new opportunity here.

The (SPY  ) is basically flat on the week through Tuesday. Volume remains very light, and with any lack of news, or interesting earnings announcements, its all calm in SPY town. The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ  ) has been at least a little more interesting. While the SPY has just moved out of a 3 week range, the Nasdaq 100 has been pressing higher throughout the same time period. The Russell 2000 (IWM  ) has attempted numerous times to break above some trend line resistance, but with the lack of volume pressure, has been unable to get convincingly above it.

Moving over to the commodities, Oil (USO  ) seems to have paused from its most recent 4 day win streak. Traders are now left to argue over whether this is new resistance or just a temporary pause in the rally. With the Crude Oil inventory numbers coming out Wednesday, this may be just the news traders need to see.

Even gold (GLD  ) has been sleepy this week. The first two days of this week have represented two narrow range days not seen in over a month. Looking at the big picture though we can see that Gold is still confidently holding near highs of the year with very little selling pressure.

Retail (XRT  ) may be an interesting sector to watch this week as some of the more popular retail names are reporting (or have reported) earnings. With Coach (COH  ), and Gap , Inc. (GPS  ) getting us started, the XRT has already pulled back over 1% this week.