The socialists won in France and the S&P futures were down 22 points last evening when I went to bed - I didn't sleep very well. But somehow, the markets got over their anxiety overnight. SPX opened lower this morning, but recovered and spent most of the afternoon in positive territory. SPX closed flat at $1370 and RUT closed up $2 at $794. Trading volume fell off a bit with 2.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading today. Trading on the NYSE was down 6% and volume on NASDAQ was down 10%.

I find it fascinating how the European debt crisis worried the markets sick last fall, but then we got over that and didn't even blink an eye when S&P downgraded Spain's debt by two notches about a week ago. Last evening, it appeared we were back to wringing our hands, but then today, we got over it again. I fundamentally believe the markets are rational, but we can wander all around the barn before we get to the "rational" conclusion. And that is the essence of why directional trading is so difficult. And that is especially true with options, because we have to predict the correct price and the correct time period. The challenge of non-directional trading is handling days like today was setting up to be last evening.

My iron condor on RUT for May stands at a P/L of +$1,060 with delta = +$35 and theta = +$102. The June condor shows a gain of $1,300 with delta = +$11 and theta = +$62. The theta/delta ratios of both positions are very strong. We will apply the Two Sigma Rule to the May position Friday; if we were doing that today, we would leave both spreads open into expiration week - unusual. But Friday is a long ways off.