Is it safe to go back in the water? Markets generally traded upward Friday with the SPX running up $14 to close at $1320 and RUT closing at $822, up $18. Even more impressive was the intraday chart; SPX never traded for a loss at any time; it was almost a straight upward progression with the exception of some hesitation late morning. Traders focused on reassuring comments about oil supply coming out of Saudi Arabia; this dropped the spot price of oil and calmed the stock markets. Although it wasn't all rosy; the Dow and NASDAQ both ended the day unchanged. From my perspective, we have a market that is a bit scared (Middle east, Libya, Euro debt, etc.) and yet sees primarily good news in the US - earnings reports are positive, economic data point to a recovery, albeit slow, etc. So the market as a whole is ambivalent. Hence, we are nervous even on a day like Friday as the markets generally head higher. The VIX hit a high over 23% two days ago, but closed down at 19.2% Friday. Trading volume dropped off significantly on Friday with 3 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. This is well below the 50 dma at 3.4B. It was the only below average day this week. Trading volume on the NYSE dropped 23% and declined 11% on NASDAQ.

Fourth quarter GDP growth was revised downward to 2.8%, below economists' estimates, but the consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan came in at 77.5 for February, up from 75.1 last month. So economic news was mixed, but traders were focused on oil and the price of oil was down.

I took today's market strength as an opportunity to close the 690/700 put spreads in my Mar iron condor on RUT. I closed them for $0.23, confirming a gain of $1,040 (20 contracts). This brings our Mar iron condor on RUT at 875/885 and 730/740 to a P/L of +$2,260 with a position delta of -$25 and a position theta of +$144. Now we wait to see if any more bad news hits the markets for Monday morning.