What I like to see–if I’m on the long side of stocks–after a drop like yesterday when the Standard & Poor’s fell 1.86% for its biggest loss in a month and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 2.29%–is a bounce that speaks to investors and traders thinking that the selling created bargains in what they still believe to be a rising market.

We didn’t get that today, October 27. The Standard & Poor’s 500 ended the day down 0.30% and the Dow Jones Industrials finished lower by 0.80%.

The Russell 2000 small cap index, which has been more sensitive to economic expectations than the larger indexes lately, fell 0.90%.

The only thing that kept the market from showing bigger losses was the outperformance by technology stocks on a very positive earnings report from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the expectations–fulfilled–of solid earnings from Microsoft (MSFT) after the close.

The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) climbed 0.50% on the day. The Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) dropped 1.82%. Which goes a long way to explaining the performance of the Russell 2000 with its huge load of smaller bank stocks.

One trend during the session concerns me. The indexes moved gradually lower for the day and were, by and large, lowest for the session at the close. The S&P 500, for example, was up 0.11% at 2 p.m. New York time. But down 0.12% at 3:30 p.m. And then down 0.30% at the close.

The drift downward during the day says to me that investors and traders remain nervous enough about the election and the surge in coronavirus infections–and their effect on the economy–to decide to stay on the sidelines rather than jump in on the drop.

Among what I’ve termed economically dependent stocks American Airlines (AAL) fell 4.83% on the day. Six Flags (SIX) was lower by 1.01%. MGM Resorts dropped 4.93%. (I own Put Options on American Airlines and MGM in my Volatility Portfolio. Those bets on falling share prices were up 9.79% for American Airlines and 11.97% for MGM Resorts today.) My gold hedges gained with the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) closing ups 1.62% on the day and Barrick Gold finishing up 1.73%.