The markets opened downward this morning and chopped sideways and down for most of the day. Much of the loss was recovered late in the day. SPX closed unchanged at $1125, near its high for the day. RUT dropped $5 to close at $648. Trading volume was flat to down with the S&P 500 stocks trading flat at 3 billion shares. Trading on the NYSE dropped 2% and it dropped 13% on the NASDAQ. Initial unemployment claims reported at 450k, down three thousand from last week. Continuing claims were down 84k to 4.485 million. The PPI (producer price index) rose 0.4% in August, surprising analysts who expected a smaller increase.

Gold hit record highs today at $1,277 per ounce. To my mind, that demonstrates the high levels of fear and uncertainty still present among investors. A contrarian might see this as evidence that the bearish mood has run its course. But I think the equity markets will struggle to gain higher ground until we see significant improvement on the unemployment front.

My Sept RUT iron condor positions will all expire worthless this weekend; that closes Sept for a 15% gain. My Oct iron condor continues to torment me; the market is hovering right around the levels where I need to hedge this position and then remove the hedge. Today I sold the long Nov calls I bought yesterday. This position now stands at a P/L of -$685, delta = -$93 and theta = +$142. Theta is still larger than delta, but not by as much as I would like. The delta of the short Oct calls stands at 18, right at the edge of triggering the adjustment. So we continue to watch and see if the markets can break through resistance at this level or turn back downward. The way the bulls keep pushing the indexes back up each day is impressive. But if resistance continues to hold, sooner or later we will get some bad news that will push us back down to support levels.