Remember the see saw from the playground at school? This market reminds me of that childhood toy. Yesterday, SPX opened at $1412 and ran to $1428. This morning, SPX opens at $1428 and trades down to close at $1414, almost where we started yesterday. RUT fared even worse, losing $13 to close at $814, almost a 2% drop. Today's move keeps the broad market averages solidly in this sideways consolidation pattern of the past week to ten days. As you might expect, volatility bounced back up with VIX closing the day at 17.6%. Trading volume dropped off from yesterday with 2.7 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading today. Trading volume dropped less than 1% on the NYSE and dropped 3% on NASDAQ.

The non-farm payroll report was the big news of the day, reporting 171k new jobs, better than economists expected, but the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9%. The jobs report appeared to start trading off on a positive note this morning, but that quickly faded. I suppose the jobs report had something for everyone; bulls could look at it as "somewhat better" or "on the right path", while the bears saw "a weak economic recovery" and "no improvement in the unemployment picture". SPX moved into the red within an hour of the open, and ticked steadily down after 1:00 pm ET.

My November iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$2,220 (+13%) with position delta = -$3 and position theta = +$134 (on 20 contracts). My December position on RUT at 710/720 and 880/890 stands at a P/L of +$1,020 (+6%) with position delta = -$23 and position theta = +$63.

Enjoy your weekend.