Santoli: Stocks return to their winning ways. But was July's brief pain enough to satisfy the market gods?

The predominant condition of the stock market across all relevant time periods is "up."

The S&P 500 index has posted a positive return in more than 70% of all calendar years and better than 60% of all months, building on a 54% daily win rate. It's far more common for stocks to be up 20% or more in a year than for them to decline by any amount at all.

The S&P has hit an all-time high on 7% of all days since 1952, including three times last week, culminating in Friday's rally above 7750 on a soggy jobs report that dampened concerns that the Federal Reserve would soon need to lift interest rates.

This history is well understood, right? The fact that the stock market favors the bulls more often than bears is the very premise of the investment industry. It's further been established that investors who check and tinker with their portfolios less frequently outperform over time.

So why do those of us who cover markets and those who participate in equities spend so much time scrutinizing the market's vital signs, scanning for potentially unhealthy irregularities and metabolic disturbances?