SPX spiked upward at the open this morning and then climbed to hit its intraday high around 1 pm ET. SPX closed up $20 at $1794. RUT tacked on $17 to close at $1139. Trading in SPX the last four days appears to be confirming that support level at $1773. SPX made up a lot of recent losses today, but is a long ways from resistance at $1850, so be careful about going bullish just yet. RUT broke through the 50 dma, but couldn't hold it, closing just below that level. That 50 dma at $1140 and resistance at $1147 are good levels to watch in RUT.

I don't care for how the VIX moved today. It opened at 16.4%, dropped to just below 16%, but then rose to close at 17.3%, roughly unchanged from yesterday's close. While the market was trading upward most of the day, VIX rose over one percentage point. That is what we call a VIX divergence. It could be foretelling a market drop tomorrow. Trading volume fell off from yesterday with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading. Trading volume dropped 11% on the NYSE and decreased 4% on NASDAQ.

Initial unemployment claims came in at 348k, up 19 thousand from last week. Continuing unemployment claims are flat at three million. Fourth quarter GDP rose at an annualized rate of 3.2% and pending home sales fell 8.7% in December.

If you followed my lead and closed your index put spreads, don't get too anxious to re-establish those positions. I am giving this market some time to stabilize before exposing any money to another downturn.