The markets opened up weak this morning and spent most of the day slowly making up ground, ending the day essentially unchanged. The Nov Consumer Confidence Index came in greater than expected and was higher than October as well, but that didn't have much effect on the market. The release of the FOMC minutes from the last meeting did not generate much response either. In general, the market seemed to be on vacation in advance of the holiday. RUT closed down $2 at $593 while the SPX was essentially unchanged at $1106.

I initiated my Jan iron condor today by selling 20 contracts of RUT call spreads at $650/$660 for $1.07 and selling 20 contracts of RUT put spreads at $510/$520 for $1.10. Plus and minus one standard deviation was $532 to $646 and I gave myself a little more safety margin on the bottom side. We brought in a total credit of $4,340 and have $15,660 at risk. I placed my contingency stop loss order to trigger at values of RUT < $543. At the close of trading today, this position stood at a P/L of -$160, delta = -$33 and theta = +$79. My Dec RUT iron condor stands at a P/L of +$530, delta = -$79 and theta = +$123. In some ways, this type of slow choppy market is boring, but it is wonderful for income generation options traders.