It appeared that CAT's earnings announcement unsettled some traders, but they seemed to get over it as the day progressed. SPX began the day weakly, but revived in afternoon trading to finish with a $7 gain at $1563. RUT added $2, closing at $915. But trading volume fell off  with only 2.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading volume fell 15% on the NYSE and dropped 4% on NASDAQ. Volatility declined a bit with VIX ending the day at 14.4%, down almost one percentage point.

A strong support level on the RUT price chart is being established at $900. The lower shadows of the candlesticks have touched $900 several times before bouncing back upward. If you draw a trend line on the SPX chart through all of the lows since mid-November, then today's close at $1563 gets us back above the trend line. But that doesn't mean this correction or pullback is over. One could argue that SPX is still in a sideways trading range from roughly $1540 to $1595. So until it breaks through one of those levels, it is hard to be very confident about a trend in either direction. Of course, the longer we chop along largely sideways, we accomplish the same thing as a more severe correction.

My May iron condor position on RUT stands at a P/L of +$640 or +4% with position delta = +$46 and position theta = +$38. Will the positive NFLX announcement push the market higher? That seems doubtful, but we'll see.