Buoyed by favorable earnings from JPM before the open and better than expected retail sales, SPX opened higher, but then fell out of bed, trading down to $2083 before recovering late in the morning. SPX managed to hang onto a modest gain of $3 into the close at $2096. RUT traded flat, closing at $1265, down about twenty cents. The VIX fell back only about 0.2 points to close at13.8%. Trading volume in the S&P 500 was unchanged at 1.8 billion shares. But trading volume was up 7% on the NYSE and was also up on NASDAQ, but only marginally at +2%.

Retail sales came in at a gain of 0.9% for March, a big improvement over February's 0.5% decline. The Producers Price Index (PPI) rose 0.2% in March, up from last month's 0.5% drop.

This market wandering is doing wonders for my condors; the May position is up 13% and the June position is already up 5% even though we still have 65 days until expiration. We were able to open the June position early because we closed April early and freed up capital.

Get your black arm bands ready for tomorrow...