The markets opened in the red this morning and basically chopped sideways all day. If you were waiting for a correction, this certainly wasn't it, since we saw only very modest losses today. SPX dropped off $3 to close at $1561 and RUT lost $1 to close at $952. VIX ended the day unchanged at 11.4%, so traders haven't changed their bullish outlook.

As one might expect for a quadruple witching expiration, trading volume was elevated today with 3.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks. Trading on the NYSE was up 106% and trading volume increased 33% on NASDAQ.

Many economists have been predicting that the flood of monetary stimulus by the Fed will spur inflation, but minimal evidence has appeared thus far. Yesterday's PPI report came in with an increase of 0.7% and the CPI came in today with an increase of 0.7% for February. Is this the beginning of some inflationary pressure? If so, this could force the Fed's hand sooner rather than later.

Industrial production increased 0.7% in February and capacity utilization ticked up to 79.6 for February from 79.2. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers  for March decreased to 71.8 from 77.6. The Empire manufacturing survey decreased to 9.2 for March from the previous month's 10.0. So the economic data today was mixed, and some suggested that the softening consumer sentiment data was the cause of today's market weakness but, in the absence of much more negative data, this bullish rally appears very solid.

SPX settled at $1557.08 and RUT settled at $953.58 for March. This confirms the worthless expiration of my March 810/820 put spreads, locking in an 8% gain for my March iron condor position.

Enjoy your weekend.