Trading volume picked up significantly today as traders began to return to the office after the holiday. The S&P 500 Index (SPX) gapped open higher this morning, but then declined to a low around $1995 in early afternoon trading. But the bulls came to the table and pushed SPX higher to close at $2002, down one dollar. RUT traded stronger, closing up $5 at $1179. But RUT is still trading from behind and no where near the highs it hit earlier this year. Volatility rose a bit with the VIX adding three tenths of a point to close at 12.3%.

Trading in the S&P 500 stocks came in at 1.7 billion shares, just below the 50 dma at 1.8B. Trading volume rose 32% on the NYSE and 51% on NASDAQ, but those percentage gains are off low numbers from Friday's pre-holiday trading.

The ISM manufacturing index reported out for August at 59.0, up from July's 57.1. Construction spending rose 1.8% in July, a nice increase from June's decline of 0.9%.

My September iron condor on SPX is pretty well complete at this point with the call spreads closed and the 1830/1840 put spreads far OTM. Assuming those puts expire worthless, we will close September for a gain of about 15%. I opened the October position last week and we are up 2% through today, but a lot can happen in 44 days. The current pause as SPX plays with the $2,000 level is working well for these positions.