I grew up in an America where we were infamous for not having a clue about what was going on anywhere else in the world. How surprising it is now to find us knowing the names of Europeans involved in the ECB, finance ministers and other European leaders. Moreover, our markets have been hanging on every bit of news coming out of Europe. Today was no different. Our markets were basically treading water looking forward to the Euro Summit when news came out late in the afternoon that the G20 was considering some kind of lending program to assist Europe. That spiked the major market averages for a few minutes, but then most of those gains were erased into the close. SPX ended up with a $3 gain to close at $1261 and RUT gained less than a dollar to close at $746. Market trading volume was flat to modestly higher with 3.0 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading (3.3B is the 50 dma). Trading volume was up 14% on the NYSE and up 11% on NASDAQ.

More ominously, today marks the fourth session that the VIX has moved upward, closing today just under 29%. This marks a classic divergence with the VIX moving upward as the market averages track sideways. At best, it represents a great deal of uncertainty among traders as they hedge themselves against a possible down draft. At worst, it is predicting the down draft. I am inclined to think we will continue to trade largely sideways, but within a volatile trading range - in short, more of the same. My reasoning is simplistic. I don't see any clear and definitive solutions to the European debt crisis coming out in the short term; much like our own situation here, the political realities dictate a lengthy, contentious struggle.

My Jan SPX iron condor continues largely "as is" with a P/L of -$1140 with delta = -$50 and theta = +$95. So our position's theta/delta ratio remains strong, but the 1350/1360 call spreads are inside of one standard deviation OTM, so that is keeping our condor in red ink. Tomorrow and Friday we will likely see volatile moves in both directions for the markets as various news tidbits flow out of the Euro Summit.