The markets took a breather today. SPX gained $1 to close at $1315 while RUT closed at $785, up $2. To my surprise, VIX fell almost two percentage points to close at 18.3%. Wow! The markets have really forgotten about the European debt issues. I can't get over how quickly this market posture has changed, and with little or nothing substantially different in Europe. Trading volume was mixed with a slight decrease in the S&P 500 trading down to 3.3 billion shares; trading on the NYSE rose 13% and trading on NASDAQ declined 1%.

The only economic news of the day was existing home sales for December, which were up to 4.61 million from the previous 4.39M.

RUT settled at $780.62 and SPX settled at $1313.93 for January. That officially completed my second January iron condor with a 7% gain as the 670/680 put spreads expired worthless. The Feb RUT condor stands at a P/L of +$2,460 with delta = -$51 and theta = +$57. Thus far, the Flying With The Condor™stands at a gain of 5% for 2012, as compared to a gain of 4.5% on SPX, so we are managing to stay ahead of the broad market so far this year (these results only include closed positions).

Well, I have to go clear out some snow; we are in the middle of winter storm here. Have a pleasant weekend.