A doctor evaluating the markets today might say the patient’s condition has stabilized - but there are some nagging symptoms and inconclusive test results that need to be monitored closely.

The government bond market stopped fibrillating halfway through Tuesday’s trading session, as yields halted their quick ascent and even pulled back a bit. As hinted here yesterday, this was a precondition for stocks to settle down.

They have, for the moment. “Settled,” in fact, is a pretty good word to describe the stock market’s outward appearance, given the lack of overall progress more than a third of the way through the year. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed Tuesday less than half a percent above where it finished on Dec. 29. Nothing happening there, right?

But the push-and-pull beneath the surface has been dramatic, and suggests a few things to watch closely in order to make a prognosis.

-The retail sector has hung in there pretty well, even if it hasn’t been the great winner that the consensus assumed it would be entering the year with more jobs and cheaper gas. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) is up 2.7% for the year, even as consumer spending has only occasionally showed signs of accelerating.

There is always a lot of noise in the broad retail-sales numbers, with questions about how well they track what we all consume. One example: Some economists are saying the mid-April launch of the Apple Watch could skew the retail-sales data a bit, a sign of just how much a single gadget can energize what has seemed like a cautious consumer.

So how this sector responds to today’s data and the performance of some big department-store chains will hint whether this remains a trade that investors can hide in for a while longer.

-Two other sectors are not helping the bull case, though, and they’re the ones that market students have been examining for the longest. The transportation stocks, represented by the iShares Transportation Average ETF (IYT), have conspicuously lagged, and are down more than 5% this year. Graybeards like to see the transports “confirm” a rally, so this has been a nagging issue for investors.

The sector is dominated by the package-haulers and railroads. Apologists cite the strong dollar and slowdown in oil transport as legitimate excuses for the transports’ weakness. There’s truth there, but it would help if the stocks didn’t need so many excuses.

One reason the broad market remains stalled through the slowing economy of recent months is that the typical stable, dividend-rich parts of the market have struggled – thanks to those higher bond yields. The utilities chart looks even sicker than the transports, with the Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLU) down 7.5% in 2015.

Typically, the stable, yield-hog sectors have been able to take up the slack when the cyclical groups get fatigued. But that hasn’t been the case. The market can overcome such challenges, and very well might, as technology and other cyclical areas hold up, while the low-level corporate-merger buzz grows steadily louder.

If forced to give a concise evaluation of the market, the doctor would call its condition “fair” – which, perhaps, means this closely watched but not-all-that-interesting trading range remains in place for now.