The markets opened basically flat this morning but quickly turned south when the dollar strengthened. SPX lost $11 to close at $1338 while RUT dropped $12 to close at $836. Trading volume was down across the board with 2.8 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading.Volume dropped 6% on the NYSE and dropped 13% on NASDAQ. The CPI increased 0.4%, in line with analysts' estimates. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey reported an increase to 72.4 in May from April's 69.8. But traders seemed to ignore this economic data and just took their money off the table. Although the low volume suggests the institutions are largely sitting on the sidelines.

I applied my "Two Sigma" rule to the remaining spreads in my May iron condor on RUT. The 920/930 call spreads are over three standard deviations OTM while the 720/730 put spreads are over four standard deviations OTM. So I will allow both spreads to expire worthless and book an 8% gain for May. This brings the recommendations of the Flying With The Condor™service to a 19% gain for this year, handily beating the S&P 500 which is up a little over 6%. The June iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$756 with position delta = -$53 and position theta = +$92.

Have a good weekend.