Today's market was mixed and weak until around mid-day, when the major market indexes all turned bearish. The S&P 500 closed below its 200 day moving average and Nasdaq broke its 50 day moving average. John Murphy, the famous market technician, has long used a 13/34 exponential moving average crossover system on SPX to identify the overall market trend. Those EMAs crossed today, as the MACD touched zero, suggesting a new trend downward. The only glimmer of positive news was a preliminary report that trading volume on the exchanges was lower today.

The RUT closed at $484.25. I was out of the office today, but I had entered an order to close the call spreads of my July iron butterfly for $0.50 and that order was filled late in the day when the market traded downward significantly. That resulted in a gain of about $3,300 on the calls, but my 450/480 put spreads are about $1,100 underwater. This late in the month, time decay is helping that position each day, but I will be watching it very carefully now that my call spreads are closed. I will close those spreads this week, Friday at the latest.

My Aug iron condor stands slightly in the black (ca. +$200) with a position delta = +$35 and theta = +$62; the delta of my short $430 puts is -18 (I will adjust at 20); another measure for adjustment that I watch is the debit to close the put spreads, currently at $1.45, less than twice the original credit of $0.95. So this condor is close to an adjustment trigger, but if the overall market weakens significantly, I may simply close the put spreads rather than adjusting.