This was a relatively slow week for economic data, with the exception of the Fed minutes being released. But economic reports continue to be mediocre or weak with the notable exception of real estate. Earlier this week, existing home sales hit a three-year high, continuing a stream of positive data supporting the notion of a recovery in real estate. But some negative news appeared this morning when new home sales tumbled in July to 394k, down from 455k in June. But the markets gapped open upward this morning. Are we back to a point where bad news is interpreted as good news with the reasoning that it will cause the Fed to continue pumping money into the markets? The release of the FOMC minutes made it quite clear that a diversity of views exist in the FOMC on whether to taper now or later, or even what data should trigger a decision.

SPX ran up $7 to close at $1664 while RUT only increased $2 to close at $1038. Today's close by SPX finally broke above the 50 dma. SPX had unsuccessfully challenged that level for the past four days. Volatility dropped again today with the VIX closing at 14%. Trading volume was up a bit with 1.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading. Trading volume was flat on the NYSE and appeared to be huge on NASDAQ with +63%, but that was an anomaly following the NASDAQ outage yesterday.

My Sep iron condor on RUT stands at a 14% gain with delta = +$9 and theta = +$48. This should be an interesting ride between now and September 18th (the FOMC announcement). Hold on tight.