The markets traded down this morning, but reversed course later in the day and made a significant push upward in the last hour of trading. SPX closed at $1410, up $11 while RUT closed up $6 at $814. Trading volume of the S&P 500 stocks remained beneath the 50 dma and was essentially unchanged from yesterday at 2.4 billion shares. Trading on the NYSE was up 4% and trading volume was down 2% on NASDAQ. The VIX traded up as high as 17% this morning, but settled to 15.5% by the close.

New home sales came in flat for October at 368k. Tomorrow brings unemployment claims and a second estimate of third quarter GDP.

SPX closed at resistance at $1410, where it closed last Friday and where it opened Monday. This was a strong support level in late October before the market broke through support and traded down strongly. Do the bulls have the momentum to break through resistance here? Unfortunately, this market is being jerked back and forth by whatever sound bites come out of D.C., so it is exceedingly difficult to predict the short term trend. One could even argue that an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff is priced into the $60 rise of the past couple of weeks.

My Dec iron condor on RUT is feeling the pressure with a P/L of -$2,560 with delta = -$202 and theta = +$137. I may have to close and roll my call spreads tomorrow. We'll see.