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Category: Dr. Duke's Blog
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 It appears that our markets are simply not going to move until the Greek debt crisis is resolved. We have been hearing about deadlines for a deal for weeks, and the deadlines just seem to get postponed a few days. Is June 30 a solid deadline? I certainly hope so. The major indexes have retreated into their trading ranges of the past few months. SPX dropped $6 to $2102 but RUT only lost a dollar, closing at $1283. The theme of the small and mid-caps leading the market continues.Volatility increased nearly a full point to 14.1% on the VIX. That seems a little outsized compared to the market moves today - perhaps the traders losing patience are buying protection just in case this Greek saga does have some downside for our markets. Trading volume remains pretty flat with 1.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading (still below the 50 dma). Trading volume increased 7% on the NYSE, but decreased 2% on NASDAQ.

Initial unemployment claims reported at 271k, about flat with last week's 268k. Continuing unemployment claims increased by twenty two thousand to 2.25 million. Our unemployment numbers have stabilized very well. Unemployment numbers aren't increasing but we aren't seeing the hiring that goes with strong economic expansion. We aren't putting those people who have dropped out of the labor force back to work.

When the markets spiked upward last week, I closed the call spreads in my August 1100/1110 and 1350/1360 condor on RUT. Today, I rolled out a little farther and sold the 1360/1370 calls. This position now stands at a net gain of 2.5% with position delta = -$40 and position theta = +$66 on 20 contracts. Yesterday, I closed the July condor position for a 19% gain. The Flying With The Condorâ„¢service is now up 29% year to date.