The markets opened in positive territory this morning, but then seemed to stall and trade sideways. Around 1 pm ET, SPX began a slow but steady climb upward, closing at $1564, up $12 on the day. This is the fourth day in the last nine sessions of trading that SPX has come very close to its all time high just above $1565. So tomorrow's trading will be interesting - break-out or fake-out? RUT has been trading in a much more muted fashion than SPX the past several sessions. RUT was unchanged much of today, but traded higher in the afternoon, closing up $4 at $950.

One can draw a pretty clear trading range from $940 to about $955 on the RUT chart. But there have been very few closes near the bottom of that trading range during the past nine trading sessions. The corresponding trading range on SPX has been about $1550 to $1560, but the daily price ranges have been much larger. Take last Thursday and Friday for example. On Thursday, SPX dropped $13 or 0.8%, only to retrace almost all of that the next day with an $11 gain or 0.7%. By contrast, RUT lost $3 or 0.3% last Thursday and gained $2 or 0.2% on Friday. That makes for an interesting observation, but what does it mean? Normally, I think of the mid and small cap stocks (represented by RUT) as the "risk on" stocks, trading up strongly when we are bullish and trading down strongly when we are spooked. On that basis, perhaps this relationship of SPX and RUT is just one more indicator of traders' collective nervousness as we reach for all time highs on SPX.

The low levels of trading volume support that thesis. Only two billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks traded today and trading volume declined 12% on the NYSE; trading fell off 13% on NASDAQ. It is certainly true that the bulls have effectively shrugged off the Cyprus Banking bad news, but that doesn't mean traders are euphorically bullish and buying with both hands.

Today's batch of economic news was mixed: durable goods orders jumped 5.7% in February, up from a decline of 3.8% in January. The Case-Schiller Home Price Index increased 8.1% in January, up from a 6.8% gain. But, on the other hand, consumer confidence dropped to 59.7 in March, down from 68.0; new home sales came in at 411k for February, down twenty thousand from January. Perhaps this data contributed to most of today's sideways trading.

My April condor remains underwater by 9% with position delta = -$8 and position theta at +$95. Watch for tomorrow's open on SPX. If it opens higher, don't be surprised if that triggers some profit taking. This market is bullish, but nervous.