After a five-day drop, is the S&P 500 resilient or complacent?
Wednesday marked the first five-day drop for the S&P 500 index SPX in nearly a year. The losing streak is the longest since Dec. 28, when, not-so-funnily enough, Wall Street was fretting about spending cuts and a fiscal cliff. Sound familiar?

But the market is up nearly 19% so far this year, suggesting we aren’t that worried. The S&P could see its best finish since 2009, when the market ended with a gain of 23%, or maybe even beat the finish of 2003, when it closed up over 26%.

Another factoid to note comes from JonesTrading’s Michael O’Rourke, who says in The Closing Print that the S&P 500 is roughly 2% from its all-time high. He asks if that’s a sign that the market is complacent or resilient right now, without saying where he comes down.

Alpari U.K.’s Craig Erlam believes the market is a mix of both, but weighted towards the latter. He says stocks are holding up “surprisingly well” given that Congress has to pass a budget by Monday or face partial shutdown, and possibly default on its debt as early as the middle of October if an agreement to raise the debt ceiling isn’t met. He gives two reasons for that resiliency: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/09/...omplacent/