It seems like I am almost continually commenting on this market's extreme volatility. Perhaps we need to re-define a volatile market, e.g.,  perhaps we should not comment on a wild day in the markets unless the Dow loses or gains at least 200 points! In any case, today was another one of those days. The markets opened and made a brief run upward before collapsing and then staged a huge rally to actually finish the day with gains! RUT opened the day and made a brief run up as high as $704 before dropping to $678 by mid-afternoon. RUT closed up $2 at $696. SPX traded similarly and closed at $1137, up $1. SPX traded as low as $1115 today, near Friday's close of $1111 - does this establish the area of $1111 - $1115 as a good support level? Maybe - two data points are slim support.

The only economic data of any significance was the Empire State Manufacturing Index. It reported a value of 19.1, down from last month's 31.9, but still showing positive gains; the employment index portion of this report rose for the fifth consecutive month. But the falling Euro and European fiscal concerns overwhelmed other news. But the Euro rebounded in the afternoon relative to the dollar, and the weakening dollar may have been behind the afternoon's rally.

My May iron condor continues to limp along with a position delta of +$48 and theta = +$924. That huge theta is helping erase some of the losses, but I should hasten to point out that I do not recommend having an iron condor position open during expiration week unless the remaining spreads are greater than two standard deviations OTM. But these are unusual times and I am trying to minimize losses in this position - remember when your parents used to say, "do as I say, not as I do"? By contrast, the June RUT iron condor is sitting fat and happy with delta = +$8 and theta = +$71. So, I will continue to nurse the May position along to gain as much time decay benefit as possible before closing this position.