The markets opened a little weakly this morning, but began to build all morning and hit highs in the early afternoon before giving back some of the gains. SPX rose as high as $1414 before pulling back to close up $6 at $1410. RUT gained $8 to close at $838. Today was the first time RUT has been able to break through that $832 barrier that has formed the upper end of the trading range since early February. Will RUT now drive higher to catch up with the broader markets? We are still well below the 2011 highs at $865.

One would expect trading volume to pull back somewhat after expiration Friday, and it did with 2.7 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; this is right at the 50 day moving average. Trading volume fell 44% on the NYSE and dropped 24% on NASDAQ. Today was a quiet day for economic news. The primary news that had everyone talking and speculating was Apple's announcement that they will pay a dividend later this year and are instituting a stock buy-back program. Initially, APPL pulled back a bit but strengthened later in the day to close at $601, a new all time high.

My April iron condor on RUT is now up about $1,800 with a delta of -$16 and theta = +$62 on 20 contracts. The 910/920 call spreads are now 1.4 standard deviations OTM and the 710/700 put spreads are 2.4 standard deviations OTM. So this position is doing well so far. We are up about 11% with a potential gain of about 16%.