Santoli’s Thursday market notes: A slow start to the summer as the S&P 500 churns near a high

This is the daily notebook of Mike Santoli, CNBC’s senior markets commentator, with ideas about trends, stocks and market statistics.

More mild chop with a fairly firm undertone and slight upside bias. The big indexes sideways for six weeks, yes, but nothing crucial has broken down. The deepest pullback is less than 5% and now some of the more aggressive, risk-seeking areas might be getting some traction. As noted earlier this week, the S&P 500 is within 1% of the former record high, which often means it would be odd for bidders not to take a shot at getting it back up there.