It is dangerous to short this market. After yesterday's weakness, the markets opened lower this morning in spite of an improved unemployment claims report. One might have been tempted to go short. After all, I read everywhere that a correction is imminent. But the weakness was short lived; by noon the market was back in positive territory, headed for gains on the day. SPX closed at $1219, up $5 and RUT was even stronger, rising $9 to close at $735. Trading volume was flat to down with 3.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks changing hands (right at the 50 dma). Trading volume on the NYSE was down 2% and volume was down 9% on NASDAQ. Initial unemployment claims came in at 435k, down 24k from last week and continuing claims dropped 90k to 4.3 million. This wasn't a great report, but it is starting to show a slow, but steady improvement. As data of slow improvement continues to accumulate and the Fed continues their QE II, it is hard to bet against the bulls.

Not much is changed for my condor positions. The Nov condor is slowly trimming its losses as time decay kicks in. The Dec condor is very well positioned with delta = -$19 and theta = +109. Next week, I am going out to Las Vegas for the Traders Expo; I hope to see you there. If you can't make the trip, my talk will be webcast.