Today the rally in equities took a pause around the globe. The Dow, NASDAQ and S&P 500 followed the pattern in the major Asian and European indexes to close in the red. Our benchmark S&P 500 opened at its -0.18% intraday high, traded sideways through the lunch hour, slipped lower in the early afternoon and still lower in the final 15 minutes to end the session 0.01 points above its intraday low for a -0.55% close. The rally pause comes the day before the release of the July FOMC minutes.

The closing yield on the 10-year note rose two points to 1.57%.

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

As we see on the daily chart, trading volume remains summer-time light but ticked up a bit on today's selling.

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.