The Stock Market Is Having a Bad Day Even If It Doesn't Look That Way

With less than two hours to go in trading, the S&P 500 has dipped just 2.29 points—less than 0.1%—while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite is up 0.1%.But the market is much weaker than those numbers suggest. Just 137 of the S&P 500's 502 stocks are up on the day—that's just 27%, for those counting at home—what's typically known as bad breadth. Breadth stinks, yet stocks are basically flat. Here's how the S&P 500 pulled off that neat little trick. For the S&P 500, however, ...