The jobs reports brought the sellers into the market this morning, driving the major indexes significantly lower; however, most of those losses were recovered during the last hour of trading. RUT traded down to its 50 dma at $640 before bouncing up to close at $651, a loss of $4 on the day. SPX broke through its 200 dma at 1115 and then recovered to close at $1122, for a loss of $4.

Over 131k jobs were lost in July and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5%. Although this job loss number was smaller than last month, it was still a loss. The average work week remained essentially unchanged at 34.2 hours (it was 34.1 hours last month). Normally, one expects to see work week hours increase before hiring resumes.

Trading volume was modestly higher with a 9% increase on the NYSE and a 5% increase on NASDAQ. The S&P 500 stocks traded at 3.2 billion shares, up modestly from yesterday but still under the 50 dma. So our sideways to upward trend on modest volume continues. Economic data has been proving very uninspiring and this doesn't give the bulls the momentum they need to sustain a rally. But the data are not bad enough to fuel a case for the bears so dips in the market are seen as bargains - today's action was an excellent example. So, this sideways action is likely to continue until the economic data can build either a bullish or a bearish case.

I removed the call hedge this morning on my Aug condor, which now stands at a P/L of -$1,682 with position delta = -$61 and position theta = +$220. Now that we are under two weeks to expiration, theta is ramping up on this position. The Sept iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$740, with delta = +$1 and theta = +$74.