The divergence between SPX and RUT yesterday appears to have been an early warning signal for the return of the bulls, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it just yet. SPX gained $26 to close at $2066, just barely above the upper edge of the January trading range. RUT popped up $21 to $1237. And the VIX dropped one and a half points to close at 15.4%. So everything appears to be on the bulls' side, except trading volume. Trading in the S&P 500 stocks was slightly better than yesterday at 2.2 billion shares, right at the 50 dma. Trading volume was down 1% on the NYSE and up 2% on NASDAQ.

I expected retail sales to push this market one way or the other, but I was wrong. Retail sales came in this morning down 0.6% for February, slightly better than January's 0.8% decline. Initial unemployment claims decreased to 289k from last week's 325k, but that is roughly where it has been running for several months now. Continuing unemployment claims decreased five thousand to 2.4 million, essentially unchanged.

Today's pop in the indexes pushed my March condor on RUT to an almost perfectly delta neutral stance (+$4 on 20 contracts). The net P/L at the close was +11%. I will likely close the position tomorrow to free up capital for another position. The April condor  is up 5% with position delta of -$19 on 20 contracts.

The PPI and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment data come out tomorrow, but those aren't normally market-moving events.