(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street pros have a warning for investors eager to jump back into the stock market as it rebounds Tuesday: Watch out for headfakes in the middle of a longer-term decline.

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“We call it the ‘pull the football’ market,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading, referring to the classic gag from “Peanuts” cartoons. “Lucy sets up Charlie Brown for the kick, and he falls for it every time.”

The S&P 500 Index is up more than 2% after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the trade war with China is set to de-escalate, before giving back part of that gain in the afternoon. The move comes on the heels of a more than 2% decline based on concerns that President Donald Trump is considering trying to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“I think what we’re seeing now is about as myopic a market as we’ve ever seen,” said Michael Kantrowitz, chief investment strategist at Piper Sandler & Co.

The issue for traders is this is when things can get dicey.

“This is bear market activity,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading. “The choppy nature of it is generally fairly frequent, especially in the early stages.”

While the S&P 500 has yet to close down 20% from its record high, the definition of a bear market, it has come within inches of doing so. Instead it’s in a correction, having lost more than 14% from its peak on Feb. 19.

Substantial swings in either direction aren’t usual in these periods. The trick is figuring out when the gains start outpacing the declines.

“There will be bounces for sure, but tough to call a bottom until we have more clarity,” Saluzzi said. “I think a lot of longer term investors are just frozen here - don’t want to sell, but don’t want to buy.”

That’s understandable. The S&P 500 is down 6.3% in April, putting it on track for its worst month since 2022, after losing 5.8% in March. So who wants to bet the selling is over?

“We’re likely going be range bound,” Kantrowitz said. “The upside is somewhat limited because we still have really high tariffs and really high uncertainty, and that’s not likely to go away in the near term.”

It also may explain the recent drop in trading volume from the start of the month. Volume in the S&P 500 Tuesday was about 17% less than the average over the past 30 days, and the figure has been light for about a week.