A surprising jump in unemployment claims took the market down sharply at the open this morning, but it steadily erased most of the losses by the close of trading. SPX closed unchanged at $1315 while RUT resumed its hard charging ways by gaining $4 to close at $827. Trading volume was flat with three billion shares of the S&P 500 trading today. Trading volume was down 2% on the NYSE and down 2% on NASDAQ. Members of the FOMC reaffirmed their plans to continue quantitative easing; many have been criticizing their "easy money" approach in light of increasing food and fuel costs; but the Fed sees lagging job growth and is willing to risk inflation to reboot the economy.

Initial unemployment claims jumped to 412 thousand, an increase of 27k from last week. Continuing unemployment claims dropped 58k to 3.68 million. The PPI increased 0.7% in March, fueling debate about inflation and Fed policy.

My May iron condor on RUT moved slightly into the black (+$62) with a position delta of -$6 and position theta = +$58. The 720/730 put spreads are nearly two standard deviations OTM while the 890/900 call spreads are over one standard deviation OTM and the 920/930 call spreads are nearing two standard deviations OTM.

Now we return to trying to predict this market - it seems the bears and the bulls are pretty evenly matched at this point. And trading volume appears to suggest most big players are sitting on the sidelines watching the struggle. Of course, the beauty of our delta neutral trades is that we don't need to predict what is coming.