Traders appeared to realize they had overreacted to Bernanke's comments yesterday and the market rallied out of the gate this morning and traded pretty steadily higher all day. And this came in light of some fairly gloomy economic news. Initial unemployment claims rose by 37k, existing home sales dropped by 290k in June, and the Index of Leading Economic Indicators dropped 0.2%. All signs are pointing to a very slow economic recovery. But you wouldn't know that from today's markets: SPX blew through the 50 dma at $1085 to close at $1094, up $24 on the day. RUT ran up $23 to close at $635. But all of this action occurred on low volume. Trading volume on the NYSE dropped 4% while it was flat on NASDAQ. Trading in the S&P 500 stocks came in flat from yesterday at 4 billion shares, below the 50 dma. So SPX's breakout above the 50 dma remains to be proven as a true breakout.

My Aug condor is nearing an adjustment if this rally continues; the theta/delta ratio is dropping (delta = -$75 and theta = +$128) and the delta of the short $680 calls hit 18. I initiated an iron butterfly on RUT today at $580/$630/$680 (two contracts for a $6,380 credit). This trade won't be included in the blog trading record since that is focused on iron condors, but I will track the progress in this blog.