Some modestly good economic numbers were enough to boost this market today, but the fear is still running high as evidenced in the VIX at 19.5%. Durable orders came in with a 1.1% increase for May and pending home sales were up 5.9% in May. This brought out some buyers who drove the SPX up $12 to close at $1332. RUT rose $11 to close at $776. Trading volume remains flat with 2.3 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; trading volume on the NYSE was down 3% and trading on NASDAQ was up 2%.
While everyone is focused on the European Summit, it also seems like everyone on CNBC is telling us they don't expect anything substantive to come out of the summit. So we have heightened fear of what might come out of Europe coupled with low expectations. That is a formula for sideways choppy trading and I expect that is exactly what we are in for. The supreme court ruling on ObamaCare isn't likely to move the overall market much, in my opinion, but I could be wrong. We'll see. I think that event will be more fodder for the talk radio shows rather than market moving.
My July iron condor on RUT stands at a 15% gain with delta = -$17 and theta = +$27. At this point, there isn't much time value in those options, so the theta decay is pretty small. The primary question with this position at this point is whether to close it early or not. On the one hand, I can capture a nice 15% gain and go take a nap. On the other, the debits to close, while small, add up to real money on several hundred contract positions. We'll see. One thing I am not considering is rolling spreads up or down to increase my gains. I have learned the hard way that when I stretch for those additional gains, I often get in trouble... Some will accuse me of being boring, but I'm up over 30% at mid-year!
