Well, here we are on March 1 and I don't see any swarms of locusts or any of the other predicted calamities. You doomsday preppers may have a bit longer to wait for the collapse of civilization. The markets opened weakly this morning with the S&P 500 trading as low as $1501 before bouncing back to close at $1518 for a gain of $4 on the day. RUT gained $4 to close at $915. VIX dropped to 15.4%, a bit lower than yesterday's close. After spiking up over 19% on Monday, VIX has calmed quickly. Trading volume dropped off a bit with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; this is slightly below the 50 dma at 2.6B. Trading volume on the NYSE dropped 8% and volume decreased 5% on NASDAQ.

Today's economic data were a mixed bag with personal income declining 3.6% in January, but the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey inched up to 77.6 for February from January's 76.3. The ISM Index bumped up a little over one point to 54.2 in February but construction spending dropped 2.1% in January after a 1.1% increase in December.

I hope you all have a great weekend.