The ISM manufacturing index surprised analysts this morning with a reading of 51.5 for September, the first sign of expansion after three months of contraction. This prompted a big market rally with SPX surging as high as $1457 before the bears pulled it back down. SPX closed at $1444, up $4 and RUT gained $3 to close at $840. VIX increased 0.6 points to 16.3%; the VIX dropped as low as 15.1 this morning before the bears came back to play.

The SPX candlestick looks like a shooting star, but the body is a bit large for the purist. But the trading activity depicted by that candlestick isn't encouraging. The bulls drive the market quite a bit higher, but then the bears are able to pull the market almost all the way back - not good. Trading volume was basically flat with 2.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; trading volume declined 10% on the NYSE and dropped 4% on NASDAQ.

Construction spending dropped 0.6% in August. Maybe we got ahead of ourselves with the ISM report; after all, it wasn't long ago we were given the anemic 1.3% GDP growth for the second quarter. Today's trading is just one more indicator of the extreme volatility of this market. Imagine if we get a truly bad bit of news...

My Oct condor stands at a P/L of -$520 with delta = +$65 and theta = +$83. Remember: we are working our way toward another jobs report Friday.