Today's market traded generally sideways to slightly higher. All of the broad indexes closed modestly higher, but off of their intraday highs. The pattern continues to look like a classic consolidation or base formation after a strong run upward. What should be encouraging to the bulls is the fact that whenever the market has shown any weakness intraday for the past several sessions, the buyers have returned to the table and held the broad market averages near their highs for the year. RUT closed at $621 while SPX closed at $1072.

I find it ironic (and a bit frustrating) that I have positioned my condors with extra safety margin to the downside for the past several months (negative delta), but my threats have come from the top side! I think I will position Nov with a delta neutral posture - the charts and technical indicators are pretty consistently bullish, but my emotions still worry about the other shoe dropping on the economy.

I closed the remaining eight $640/$650 call spreads this morning in my Oct iron condor. I paid $2.70 to close them and waited until the market ran up a bit this afternoon before rolling those eight contracts up to $660/$670 for $1.25. I still have the Nov $640 call hedging my top side. My short $660 calls have a delta of 16, so I still need that hedge. I considered adding one more long call today, but it would have reduced my position theta too much. At the close, the Oct condor stood at a P/L of -$1,685, position delta of -$16, and position theta = +$96.