The S&P futures were in the red this morning based on the same old European debt problems - and throw Greece's bond negotiations in for good measure. SPX opened and dropped to $1300 by mid-morning. But then it stabilized and traders started buying, steadily pulling the markets up to minimal losses for the day. SPX closed down $3 at $1313 and RUT closed down $6 at $792. The VIX spiked up in the morning, but dropped back to close at 19.4%, up less than a percentage point. Trading volume in the S&P 500 fell off to 2.6 billion shares, well below the 50 dma at 2.9B.

Personal Income was reported as rising 0.5% in December, a big improvement over the previous month's 0.1% increase. But personal spending was flat in December. We will get the Chicago PMI and the Case Schiller housing price index tomorrow; those numbers could be market-moving, but at this point it is hard to imagine much movement either way. The balancing act between the bulls and the bears is pretty close to even, but slightly tilted in favor of the bulls. It seems that when either group gets the upper hand, the buying or selling sets in to pull the market back. SPX has managed to stay above $1310 for eight sessions now, but has only closed above $1320 once. And note how the trading volume has steadily fallen off since SPX broke $1330 as the intraday high on Thursday. Stocks are cheap by many measures, but fear stemming out of Europe seems to be holding the market in check.

My Feb RUT condor stands at a P/L of +2,320 with delta = -$63 and theta = +$100. The Mar RUT iron condor stands at a P/L of +$200 with delta = +$200 with delta = -$34 and theta = +$79. This meandering market is good for these trades.