The futures were looking pretty bleak last evening, but the markets opened only slightly down this morning. However, the bears started pulling the major market indexes lower until around mid-day when buying pulled the markets up to recover most, if not all, of the earlier losses. SPX traded as low as $1297 before recovering to close at $1319, up $2 on the day. RUT closed $6 higher at $765. It appears like SPX is trying to establish support around $1290 to $1295 over the past four trading sessions. Trading volume bumped up modestly with 3.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks changing hands. Volume on the NYSE was up 1% and trading on NASDAQ was up 4%.

New home sales for April came in at 343k, a gain of eleven thousand over March. The FHFA Housing Price Index increased 1.8% in March. It doesn't seem like we have had positive news in housing for some time. To be sure, these reports aren't worthy of fireworks, but the data does give us hope. Real estate fuels a large portion of this economy.

My June iron condor on RUT at 690/700 and 890/900 stands at a P/L of +$700 with delta = +$51 and theta = +$83. Is it safe to get back in the water? I would be very cautious. Bad news continues to flow out of Europe; future news reports could push us over the edge, searching for support down around $1265. If you are trading non-directionally, be careful to follow your rules and hedge yourself appropriately. If you are trading directionally, trade small and carefully.