Markets tumbled today as reports of Black Friday sales began to come in, and the early reports were weak. SPX was actually flat on the day with about 30 minutes to go into the close, but dropped $5 in that last half hour, closing at $1801, down $5. RUT behaved a bit differently, trading steadily lower as the day progressed, and hit its low of the day just a few minutes before the close at $1129, down $14. The fact that RUT traded off so much more strongly than SPX is a bearish sign, but one data point doesn't define a trend, or, in this case, a correction. Looking at the percentage increases in trading volume from Friday is meaningless because of the holiday, but the absolute trading volume in the S&P 500 stocks came in today at 1.9 billion shares, well below the 50 dma at 2.1B.

Volatility increased about a half point with VIX closing at 14.2%. The ISM manufacturing index came in at 57.3 for November, up from the previous month's 56.4. Construction spending for October increased 0.8%, an improvement over September's 0.3% decline. All in all, more mediocre economic data.

I hedged my Dec iron condor with the RUT Jan14 1135 calls over the holiday weekend just in case the bullish trend continued strongly this week as traders returned from the holiday. I sold those calls this morning. The position stands at a net P/L of -$180 or -1% with position delta = -$173 and position theta = +$199 on 20 contracts.