After a 286 market day pause, the S&P 500 finally closed at a new record high, finally topping its previous record close on May 21st of 2015. The index spent the day in a relatively narrow trading 0.54% range, which is at the 12th percentile of the 131 market days so far in 2016. It opened at its intraday low and stuttered to its 0.62% intraday high at the end of the noon hour. It then traded in a narrow range until the final hour which ended with a trimmed gain of 0.34%. The yield on the 10-year note rose six basis points to close at 1.43%.

Here is a snapshot of past five sessions in the S&P 500.

Here is a daily chart of the S&P 500. Trading volume was rather light for a record-setting session, which comes at the start of the Q2 earnings season.

A Perspective on Drawdowns

Here's a snapshot of selloffs since the 2009 trough.

Here is a more conventional log-scale chart with drawdowns highlighted.

Here is a linear scale version of the same chart with the 50- and 200-day moving averages.

A Perspective on Volatility

For a sense of the correlation between the closing price and intraday volatility, the chart below overlays the S&P 500 since 2007 with the intraday price range. We've also included a 20-day moving average to help identify trends in volatility.