I'm not quite sure how we arrived here, but traders seem to have nothing on their minds other than reading tea leaves for when the Fed will begin to taper off their stimulus programs. The markets opened upward this morning, but then sunk into the red after the weak ISM manufacturing report at 10 am ET. But traders regained their confidence in the Fed's free lunch program around 2 pm ET and started buying again, pushing the major indexes into positive territory. SPX gained $10 to close at $1640 and RUT closed up $6 at $991. Trading volume was flat from Friday with 2.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading. Trading volume on the NYSE was up 1% and trading on NASDAQ was up 6%. The VIX closed at 16.3%, unchanged on the day.

The ISM manufacturing report came in at 49.0 (recall that numbers below 50 indicate contraction). Some history is in order: this measure hit its low around the mid thirties in November of 2008 and climbed to a peak in February 2011. The last time it moved through the area of 49 was on its way up in May 2009. So this anemic manufacturing report doesn't bode well for the economy. But this brings up an interesting conundrum as we look forward to the jobs report Friday. Will a poor jobs report be interpreted as good news for the markets because it will suggest continued Fed QE? And will a positive jobs report be considered bad news because it suggests a tapering off of the QE?

My June condor position stands at a P/L of-$1,980 with a position delta of -$87 and position theta = +$206. The 1030/1040 call spreads are over one standard deviation OTM and the 890/900 put spreads are over two standard deviations OTM, which is excellent given all of the correction talk.

Today's choppy trading may be typical of this week as everyone tries to predict what is coming in the jobs report Friday morning.