Traders appeared to be encouraged by Portugal's bond auction and opened trading this morning in the black and held that strong bias throughout the trading session. SPX bounced up against $1330 but could not break through this resistance level. SPX closed at $1324, up $12 and RUT tacked on a huge $17 to close at $810. This bullishness was a little surprising in view of the economic data out today. The ADP employment report came out with 170 thousand new jobs, but the analysts had predicted 200k. That causes some concerns about Friday's jobs report. The ISM Index came in at 54.1 for January, up slightly from 53.1 and construction spending increased 1.5% in December. These reports aren't negative, but they certainly aren't consistent with today's bullish run either.

Trading volume in the S&P 500 was up at 3.3 billion shares, but was down 3% on the NYSE. Trading volume was up 20% on NASDAQ. The VIX dropped almost one percentage point to 18.6%.

My Feb iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$780 with delta = -$141 and theta = +$200. The 840 call delta is now up to 15. Senility apparently struck yesterday when I suggested applying the Two Sigma Rule on Friday to close the call spreads - I gave away a week somewhere! My Mar RUT iron condor spread stands at a P/L of -$540 with delta = -$72 and theta = +$88. Can the market stay motivated to continue this drive higher?