In subdued trading on the post-Thanksgiving half-day session, U.S. equities are managing to eke out some gains in spite of a 3.5% fall of Disney shares. Lower crude oil prices once more dented share prices on the Dow and S&P 500.

No one wants a headache on a holiday. Generally then, traders and investors slip out the side door early, especially the movers and shakers. Even Europe and Asia know the drill when the U.S. takes a deep breath, stuffs its collective face and lays back to watch some football and engage in the high-drama of family political discussion.

The shooting down of a Russian fighter-bomber by a Turkish F-16 sent powerful ripples through the world from the diplomatic and military side to the financial side. Although one never knows, let’s hope that cooler heads will prevail and we will return to the previous status quo.

If anything characterizes movement in markets today, it could very well be the phrase “trimming the sails.” There are a number of reason investors and traders are cutting positions, or consolidating positions whether on upside or downside bets.

Jockeying for next week’s Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. has already begun. Come Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Europe and Asia will be left fairly much to their own devices. (Of course only Thanksgiving Day itself is a full on market-closed holiday, but between the run up and the lethargy of the day after, don’t expect much from New York or Chicago.

Many of the major trends in markets that we have been watching closely turned around today, although we feel that the shift is more in the way of consolidation than a strong change of sentiment.

Nature abhors a vacuum. People do, too, and generally seek to fill vacuums. With the world drifting under recent terroristic attacks and the threat of more, plus news of beheadings, torture and general mayhem wherever ISIS spreads its grimy wings, no wonder that investors and traders seem relieved and even happy about the particulars of the minutes of the last Fed meeting.

Before examining the specifics of today’s markets, it’s worth a minute to take a look at the resilience of markets across the globe, especially in those economies that have fully embraced the western model of openness and optimism.

Today was a day of recovery for markets as well it was a day of recovery from pondering the awful events in Paris this past Friday.

While we have much political and military business to take care of, it was good to see a little optimism on the stage. There were a couple of important factors driving the uptick of prices in equities, crude and the U.S. dollar.

Regardless of what consumer-spending activities were on a non-granular basis, the fact is that when two volatile components are taken out, in fact spending was very robust.