The markets traded down for the first hour or so this morning, and then strengthened and slowly gained throughout the afternoon to close with modest gains. The relatively low trading volume of the past few sessions continued today. Retail sales decreased in December and unemployment claims rose, but the market seemed unconcerned. RUT closed up $3 at $646 and the SPX traded up $3 to close at $1148. Many economic reports are due tomorrow; coupled with expiration Friday that may make for a volatile market.

When the market appeared weak this morning, that looked good for my January condors because I didn't want to close my 660/670 calls (I was trying salvage as much profit as I could from a difficult month). But, as the markets strengthened, I closed the 660/670 calls for $0.10 and allowed the 580/590 put spreads to go into expiration to expire worthless. Thus, my low probability RUT iron condor finished essentially at breakeven with +$370 (7%) and the high probability RUT condor finished at +$2,240 (14%).

The Feb RUT iron condor stands at a P/L of +$760, delta = -$66 and theta = +$103. This blog trading account is now up 38% since we started this experiment last May.