The markets opened up lower this morning, but the bulls pushed the major averages upward throughout the day and closed near their intraday highs. SPX closed at $1364, up $6 and RUT closed up $13 at $829. The bulls seem to have sufficient strength to hold this market up at these levels, but cannot push through the resistance set by last year's highs. Whereas SPX is knocking on the door of last year's highs, RUT is still a ways off of the highs set around $865 in 2011. Trading volume increased slightly with 2.7 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading (the 50 dma sits at 2.9B); volume increased 6% on the NYSE and trading volume was also up 3% on NASDAQ.

Initial unemployment claims were flat at 351k and continuing unemployment claims dropped by 50k to 3.39 million. This report is typical of recent economic data: neutral to modest improvement, not enough to get traders excited or cause them to panic either.

My March iron condor on the Russell 2000 Index (RUT) stands at a P/L of -$450 and position delta = -$122 and position theta = +$189 with 21 days to go to expiration. The 860/870 call spreads are inside of one standard deviation OTM, so that is where the pressure is on this position. The RUT chart is interesting; it seems RUT can't quite push through the recent highs around $832 or so. If RUT can break through to close above $835, that may well be a very bullish sign for the overall markets since the mid-caps often lead bull markets. Of course, if that happens, I will have to take quick action to salvage this Mar condor.