The markets opened up in positive territory today and backed off a bit after disappointing new home sales data was released. But a weakening dollar appeared to prop up the market and the major indexes held most of their gains into the close. Trading volume remained low, which makes these strong market gains the past few days rather surprising to me. I expected trading to be somewhat subdued this week with the holiday. The stock market prediction business is not for the faint of heart.

RUT ran up over $7 to close at a new high for 2009 of $631. The SPX closed for another 2009 high at $1121. Continued gains for RUT necessitated some adjustments in my Jan iron condors today. I bought two Feb $630 calls for $23.40 for my Jan 510/520 650/660 condor, resulting in a P/L at the close of  -$280 with delta = -$97 and theta = +$94. Normally I would have purchased the Feb calls at the short strike of my Jan positions, but since I was adjusting both condors in the same account, I just purchased three Feb $630 calls. I bought one Feb $630 call for $23.40 for my RUT 570/580 and 630/640 condor; at the close, it stands at a P/L of -$980 with delta = -$54 and theta = +$27. These deteriorating Greeks show the stress on the call spreads for these condors caused by the relentless push upward over the past several sessions.The Feb calls will accomplish two things for me: 1) limit my losses on these positions if the RUT continues upward, and 2) buy us some time for this market to pull back into a better range for these positions. It is proving to be an interesting week.