The familiar pattern reoccurred today - a weak open followed by buying that drives prices higher. Going long at the open and closing later in the day is a strategy that would have worked well for many of the trading sessions the last several weeks. SPX closed up $5 at $1372 while RUT lost $3 to close at $824. This pattern of SPX steadily gaining while RUT has traded sideways has been going on for nearly a month. How does this end? SPX corrects? Or RUT rallies? I'm inclined toward the correction, but this rally has proven very resilient thus far this year. Many bears have been run over. Trading volume in the S&P 500 was down a bit at 2.6 billion shares; trading on the NYSE was down 2% while volume was up 2% on NASDAQ.

Durable orders dropped 4% in January after a 3.2% increase in December. The Case Schiller housing price index dropped 4% in December, but consumer confidence spiked up in February to 70.8 from January's 61.5.

My Mar iron condor on RUT continues to ride along near the edge with P/L = +$470 and position delta = -$102 and position theta = +$238 on 20 contracts. Today's pull back in RUT reduced the 860 call delta to 15, so that accounts for the more positive P/L today. If RUT spikes up to become more aligned with the S&P 500, we will be forced to hedge this position once again; on the other hand, if RUT is the harbinger of a correction in SPX, a pull back a bit further will put this position in a sweet spot. But the key to success in the non-directional trading business is to only trade what the market gives me today - predictions are forbidden.