The markets looked pretty weak this morning as SPX dropped as low as $1392, but then the bulls rode in to the rescue and pulled the major index averages back and nearly recovered all of the losses. SPX closed at $1403, down $2 and RUT closed at $832, down $2. Trading volume was basically flat with 2.8 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading today. Trading volume on both the NYSE and NASDAQ were down less than one percent. One has to be impressed by the strength of this market; everyone keeps talking about a correction, but even when the market looks pretty weak, as it did this morning, the bulls return to the table. So far, the "correction" consists of slowing down and trading largely sideways for a time, giving all of the indicators time to catch up. Of course, it may fool me and go over the cliff tomorrow. I am always suspicious of those who confidently predict the future of the market.

GDP growth for the fourth quarter was revised to a 3.0% growth level which didn't surprise analysts one way or the other. Initial unemployment claims came down again at 359k but analysts were expecting a bigger decline. Continuing unemployment claims dropped 41k to 3.34 million. So we are slowly climbing out of the hole, but this has been the slowest recovery from a recession ever recorded.

My April iron condor on RUT stands at a net gain of $2,280 with delta = -$4 and theta = +$59 on 20 contracts.

The next area of risk for this market is the upcoming earnings season; if traders start seeing corporate weakness in those numbers, we could see the correction everyone has been predicting.