The markets opened weakly this morning due to weakness in the European markets, but the surprising increase of 297k jobs reported by ADP appeared to boost the market. In addition, the ISM Services Index hit a multi-year high at 57.1 in Dec, surprising most analysts who were predicting numbers around 55. These reports have many traders feeling more optimistic about Friday's jobs report. The SPX increased $6 to close at $1277 while the RUT erased much of yesterday's loss to close at $795, up $9. Trading volume was marginally higher with an increase in trading volume of the S&P 500 to 3.9 billion shares; this number has increased every day thus far in this new year (not many data points, I admit, but...). Trading volume dropped 4% on the NYSE and increased 4% on NASDAQ.

During this morning's weakness, I removed the hedges on my Jan SPX condors because the delta of the $1300 calls dropped to 17. But then the market whipsawed me, so this position is underwater with delta = -$119 and theta = +$290. The Feb RUT condor stands at break-even with delta = -$43 and theta = +$96. Overall, the market appears very bullish, and the economic data is unmistakably improving. But the almost unanimous bullish sentiment is a little scary. Perhaps everyone is following the "Don't fight the Fed" rule?