The broad market indexes continued to tack on positive gains today, albeit with low trading volume. The question prominently in my mind these days is, "What happens after the holiday?" After everyone returns from vacation, will this bullish run continue on stronger volume? But one cannot deny that the last few days have definitively broken the indexes out of the downward trend. An alternative explanation for the recent bullishness is that this is simply the result of end of quarter institutional buying and selling, but I would have thought we would see more trading volume if that were the case. SPX closed at $1321, up $13 and RUT gained $8 to close at $827. Trading volume was down with 2.9 billion shares of the S&P 500. Trading volume on the NYSE was flat and up 3% on NASDAQ.

Initial unemployment claims reported at 428k, basically unchanged from last week and the continuing claims remain flat at 3.7 million. The Chicago PMI came in at 61.1 for June, a big improvement from last month's 56.6.

My July condor on RUT is up $3,300 with delta = +$1 and theta = +$40. The Aug position stands at +$740 with delta = -$57 and theta = +$74. We will probably see trading volume fall off even more tomorrow and it seems likely the markets will take a breather from this strong upward trend before the holiday weekend.