The markets opened this morning in positive territory based largely on JPMorgan's positive earnings announcement. Bernanke's first day of testimony before Congress yesterday boosted stocks, but today's remarks turned the bulls into bears and the selling ensued. The relevant remarks appeared to be Bernanke's assertion that the Fed did not think it necessary to intervene any further to support the markets and did not have a plan to do so at this time. SPX hit a high of $1327 before selling off, breaking through the 50 dma and closing at $1309, down $9. RUT lost $14 to close at $823. Trading volume increased a bit across the board with 2.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading (the 50 dma = 2.8B). Trading on the NYSE was down 7% and was down 2% on NASDAQ.

Traders began the day with several economic reports. Initial unemployment claims were down 22 thousand at 405k while continuing unemployment claims were up 15k at 3.7 million. Retail sales were up 0.1%, but after auto sales are extracted, retail sales were flat for June. The PPI for June was down 0.4%. It did not appear that any of this data moved the market significantly one way or the other.

We closed the GOOG Double Calendar spread from Dr. Duke's Trading Group today for a 27% gain. I wish I had bought some GOOG calls this afternoon!

My Aug iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$1,142 with a position delta of -$34 and a position theta of +$77. After my July put spreads expire this weekend, I will start to look for the right time to initiate the September position. I can't believe I am talking about September options positions - where is the summer going?