The stock market opened higher today, and continued higher until late morning and then faltered. SPX traded as high as $1597 and then traded sideways and slightly lower the balance of the day, closing at $1593, up $6. RUT followed a similar pattern, but RUT fell off more dramatically in the afternoon, closing the day at a $1 gain at $947. Trading volume bumped up a little with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading; this is right at the 50 dma. Trading on the NYSE was down 6% and trading volume increased 4% on NASDAQ. VIX was essentially unchanged at 12.2%.

IBD moved their market signal to "Confirmed Uptrend" late yesterday on the strength of yesterday's rally. Initial unemployment claims dropped 42k to 346k and continuing claims dropped 41k to 3.1 million. Perhaps that buoyed trading this morning. Tomorrow brings retail sales, the PPI and consumer sentiment numbers.

As I look at the SPX chart for the past four days, all I can say is Wow! Almost straight up! It does make one worry a bit that the party has to end, but previous bull markets often lasted longer than anyone thought reasonable - remember the dot-com days? One aspect of this rally I am enjoying is that we hear almost nothing about the idiots in Washington these days.

My iron condor positions are doing well. It looks like the April position may pass the Two Sigma Rule tomorrow and continue into next week; it is highly probable that both Apr spreads will expire worthless. The May position stands at +$1240 with delta = -$25 and theta = +$73.