The strength of today's market impressed me. First of all, SPX opened at yesterday's close to start the day and then steadily climbed to close up $16 at $1579, only a few cents off of the intraday high. Similarly, RUT gained $15 to close at $929. Volatility dropped a full point to 13.5% and trading volume expanded with 2.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading today. Trading increased 11% on the NYSE and moved up 1% on NASDAQ.

Traders were spooked by an Associated Press tweet of a terrorist attack at about 1:10 pm ET, and that dropped the SPX $15, but that tweet was quickly discovered to be the result of a hacking incident at AP. Markets fully recovered within five minutes.

New home sales came in at 417k in March, up from 411k in February. The FHFA Housing Price Index increased 0.7% in February after a 0.6% rise in January. This further underscores the noticeable improvement in the real estate markets. But builders are struggling to take advantage of the improving demand picture. Builders, like other small businesses, are finding it difficult or impossible to get bank financing.

SPX is quickly closing in on its recent closing high at $1593 on April 11. That will be a crucial resistance level to watch as the bulls drive forward. It is hard to see anything bearish in this market - volatility keeps dropping and stocks keep trading higher. It isn't hard to find bearish arguments on CNBC and in other financial news, but the markets are trading higher. The lone dissent at this point is the Investors Business Daily with their Big Picture still holding a market posture of "Market in Correction". But that could change this evening; it is updated around 7 pm ET each evening.

My May iron condor position on RUT stands at a P/L of +$860 or +5% with position delta = +$21 and position theta = +$65. Both spreads are nearly two standard deviations out of the money (OTM), so this position is looking pretty solid with about three weeks to go until expiration. But this is a volatile market; that could change quickly.