It was a banner day on Wall Street for the bulls. The one minute chart was near ideal: a slow steady climb all day long with the major indexes closing at or near the highs of the day. SPX gained $14 to close at $1796 and RUT closed at $1120, up $20. Today was unusual in one respect - RUT outperformed SPX, gaining 1.8% as compared to SPX's 0.8% gain. However, trading volume didn't underscore the move, with 2.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading (this is just at the 50 dma). Trading on the NYSE was up 5%, but trading volume on NASDAQ was down 2%.

Traders breathed a sign of relief and the VIX declined almost three quarters of a point to 12.7%.

Initial unemployment claims edged down another week to 323k, but continuing unemployment claims rose 66 thousand to 2.9 million. The Producer Price Index (PPI) dropped 0.2% in October, as compared to a 0.1% drop last month. The Philadelphia Fed survey collapsed in November to 6.5 from the previous report at 19.8.

Today's price action is all too familiar to traders this year. From the high on Monday to the low yesterday, the market dropped $25, but then over half of that loss was recovered in one day. A trader could have successfully bought all pull backs this year and been very successful. But the problem has been determining when the pull back is over - the reversals have been very sudden and dramatic. There have not been any slow consolidations presaging a reversal. If a trader had simply bought the SPX January 2nd and then closed his eyes and ears, he would be sitting pretty today. But you don't see many, if any, traders with smiles - this year's market has been a very tough market to read and trade. Today's price action is just one more example.

My Dec iron condor stands at a net P/L of +$740 on 20 contracts or +5.4% with position delta = -$113 and position theta = +$149.

What will happen tomorrow? Are the bulls now firmly in charge? That is hard to predict. I will be watching to see if SPX can set a new all-time high and hold it into the close.