Let's recap: the market inexplicably takes it on the chin on Friday and then recovers virtually all of that loss on Monday. Today SPX tried to move higher, but hit resistance at $2110, the high from mid-March and pulled back to close at $2097 for a small loss of three dollars. Does this make any sense to anybody? The only constant in all of this back and forth is the continuing strength of the bulls to quickly recover from any loss. Maybe we are caught in this dance until a clear consensus appears out of the earnings announcements. RUT behaved similarly, closing down one dollar at $1264. In line with this sideways dance was an unchanged volatility index (VIX) at 13.3%. Trading volume rose modestly with two billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading volume rose 4% on the NYSE and rose 5% on NASDAQ.

The remaining 1110/1120 put spreads in my May iron condor on RUT continue to slowly decay toward a maximum return of 18%. I will probably close them later this week. The June condor on RUT at 1100/1110 and 1350/1360 stands at a net gain of 10%.

Today's earnings announcements included a big disappointment for Chipotle, down $37 after hours, and a miss on both sales and earnings for Yahoo; apparently even a former Google superstar can't rescue Yahoo. Amazon and Google report Thursday; they often bring some stock-moving  fireworks with their announcements. For those of you following my earnings announcement trades, I stand at an 89% win/loss ratio after nine trades this season. Tune into our next trading group meeting on May 7th for the details.