If you listen to the talking heads and gurus on CNBC, you would think that today's huge rally on the report of a reduced unemployment rate was very predictable. The reality is much different. The Non-Farm Payrolls report, aka the jobs report, cited 230k new jobs and a reduction in the unemployment rate to 7.0% from 7.3%. You might have reasonably thought that would revive the talk of the Fed tapering their stimulus programs and resulted in a market sell-off. After all, earlier this year, we had a rather sudden market pullback when members of the FOMC dared to even discuss the future possibilities of tapering at a time when the unemployment rate was quite a bit higher than it is now. It's the old marketing hype game: Sound confident as though this was all obvious and predictable and your loyal followers will increase in number. Unfortunately, it works.

At a recent trading conference, I picked up a handout from one of the speakers. He plotted the future price charts for the major stock indexes, gold, silver, and several prominent ETFs - about 8-10 in total. I placed that handout on my desk and marked the actual prices on each of the charts each month. At the end of three months, he was not only wrong on every chart, he wasn't even close. But he is selling subscriptions to his services.

SPX gained $20 to close at $1805, erasing about three of the past five days of declines. RUT was more subdued, rising $9 to close at $1131. Predictably, volatility decreased with the VIX coming in at 13.8%, down 1.3 points. SPX is now within striking distance of its recent intraday high of $1814, but the corresponding recent high for RUT was $1147, or $16 higher than today's close. So the high beta stocks were not leading today's big rally. That is why I didn't immediately run out and buy into a lot of bullish plays today. I will wait to see how next week develops.

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment report came out today with an increase from the previous result of 75.1 to 82.5 for Dec. But one has to be wary of these surveys. Just last week, the Conference Board's survey of consumer confidence didn't increase; it declined.

My Dec iron condor on RUT stands at a net P/L of +$1,350 or +8.5% with delta = -$81 and theta = +$180 (on 20 contracts). It will be interesting to see if this market rally follows through next week. I am doubtful.

Have a great weekend.