One of the traditional Wall Street historical measures is to predict the new year's market performance based on the first five days of January's trading. SPX started the year at $1846 and closed today at $1837. I am not a big fan of these stock almanac type of patterns, but I can't ignore them either. However, this year's first five days is more weak and sideways than bearish. It is certainly true that last year's first five days of trading did correctly predict a strong market, although with unprecedented price volatility.

SPX closed unchanged at $1837 and RUT was also unchanged at $1157. Trading volume was up a bit with 2.4 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading today. Volume increased 4% on the NYSE and increased 3% on NASDAQ. SPX traded to its low of the day at $1831 shortly after the open and then strengthened. The Fed minutes were released this afternoon and it seemed like the market slowly declined thereafter to nearly match the low about thirty minutes before the close; but a rally in the last few minutes brought SPX back to unchanged on the day.

My Jan RUT iron condor stands at a net P/L of -$1760 on 20 contracts or -10% with position delta = -$150 and position theta = +$440. The 1175/1185 call spreads remain squeezed, but the theta decay is helping more each day as we near expiration. I might manage to collect a small gain after all.