The stock markets opened weak and traded down all morning, then meandered sideways for the afternoon. However, trading volume was weak, suggesting the institutions are sitting on the sidelines with no serious selling ongoing. Trading in the S&P 500 stocks dropped to 3.1 billion shares while trading on the NYSE dropped 12%; to a lesser degree, trading on NASDAQ was down 2%. SPX traded down to $1132, near its recent support level at $1131 before bouncing back to close at $1137, down $9. RUT behaved similarly, trading down as low as $666, near its peak back in late July before the drop in August; RUT closed down $10 at $669. The SPX support level of $1131 is worth watching closely because the next levels of strong support are quite a bit lower at $1100 and $1040.

Factory orders for August fell 0.5%; this may have set the negative mood on the street today. But pending home sales surprised analysts by increasing 4.3%; analysts were expecting 1%.

I took today's weakness in RUT as an opportunity to attempt to salvage my Oct iron condor on RUT. I had closed the 690/700 calls and rolled to 720/730 last week. I was able to close the 720/730 spreads for a $1,020 profit and roll down to 700/710 today. That position now stands at a P/L of -$2,063, delta = -$70 and theta = +$337. The Nov condor stands at a P/L of -$600, delta = -$50 and theta = +$92. Both positions have strong theta/delta ratios but the Oct position theta is really starting to come on strong as we enter the last ten days before expiration.