I'm back in the office after attending the Traders Expo in Dallas. I highly recommend these trading conferences to you. The speakers and exhibits are excellent. Plus you get to meet other traders and learn from them as well.

But here we are back with this weak market. The SPX opened positively this morning, but then chopped sideways the rest of the day, closing up $7 at $1278. RUT also tacked on $7, closing at $788. Trading volume was down markedly from Friday's option expiration with 2.3 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading. This was the first day in the past four sessions that trading in the S&P 500 was below the 50 dma. Trading volume declined 44% on NASDAQ and declined 32% on NASDAQ.

The markets were focused largely on the European debt problems today. Of course, it helped that we had no economic reports to distract traders from Greece and the European Union. Tomorrow we will have the existing home sales report and the FOMC policy statement is due Wednesday afternoon. No change in interest rates is expected, but traders will carefully examine every word for clues about the economic recovery or lack thereof.

My iron condor positions are faring very well. When I initiated these positions a few weeks ago, I was concerned about the downside risk, so I skewed them a bit to the bearish side instead of positioning them as perfectly delta neutral. My July RUT iron condor now stands at a P/L of +$1,800 with delta = +$23 and theta = +$104 (with 20 contracts). The 710 puts have a delta of 9 and the 880 calls have a delta of 2. Thus, the position is quite safe with about 24 days to go to expiration. The Aug position stands at a P/L of +$820 with delta = +$2 and theta = +$53 (with 20 contracts). The 680 puts have a delta of 11 and the 890 calls have a delta of 5.

This market is either in a new bearish trend or is in a contracted bearish correction that may last a while. The economic situation is confusing for the trader. The fundamental data for the typical blue chip stock is very strong - profitable with a lot of cash on the balance sheet, etc. However, when one looks at the macro-economic picture, there is much to worry about - sovereign debt problems that are threatening to tear apart the European Union, and a political impasse in the U.S. concerning a plan to get our debt under control. This presents a difficult trading environment - should I be bullish or bearish? Even stocks like AAPL are being hurt in this environment and yet AAPL appears to be crushing their competition and has a very strong balance sheet. I wish our country were that well managed.