The markets traded back and forth today on a variety of economic news, but ended up largely unchanged after the dust settled. RUT initially dropped to $627 this morning and then traded sideways through most of the day. Similarly, SPX dropped to $1080 this morning, but all of the major indexes recovered late in the day. RUT didn't fully recover, closing at $635, down $6, but the SPX closed at $1096, up $1. This is the third day SPX has closed above its 50 day moving average (dma), but it appears unable to break through $1100. RUT has now closed three days above its 200 dma and appears to have strong resistance at $645. Trading volume was modest and mixed. Trading was up 5% on the NYSE, down 9% on NASDAQ, and 3.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks exchanged hands, up slightly from yesterday but well below the 50 dma. All of this suggests great market indecision. Neither the bulls nor the bears have made their case stick.

New unemployment claims fell by 29k to 429k, but continuing unemployment claims rose by 247k to 4.68 million. I can't understand why these two numbers don't move in concert; I read about seasonal adjustments and the like, but the logic escapes me. Feel free to enlighten me. The market appeared to be particularly discouraged by the Philadelphia Fed Index dropping to 5.1 from 8.0 last month; similarly the NY Fed Empire Manufacturing index fell from over 19 to 5. But buyers entered the market in the last thirty minutes and recovered much of the day's losses - maybe some traders heard that the SEC and GS have reached a settlement? That was announced by CNBC after the market closed, but no official announcement is out yet.

GOOG is being punished in after hours trading after missing earnings this afternoon. This makes my Aug 470/480 call spreads questionable; I previously thought that was a pretty conservative position. But the conference call and some time to reflect and analyze the data may make a difference in tomorrow's trading. My Aug iron condor on RUT remains very solid with position delta of -$22 and theta = +$84 - an excellent theta/delta ratio, especially since I have long call hedges in place that reduce the position theta.

The market appears to be teetering at a balance point with neither the bulls or the bears able to maintain control. Today's poor economic data was fuel for the bears, but they couldn't hold the intraday lows. It is difficult to predict who is going to win this tug of war, so delta neutral strategies are an excellent choice here.