Trading wasn't too bad today; the markets opened weakly, but started to gain modestly in afternoon trade. The Conference Board's consumer confidence survey came in this morning at 62.0 for June, down over two points from May. That put a damper on morning trade. European debt woes overshadow everything now. But the good news is that support in the market indexes appears to be holding for now. Probably the best we can expect is a choppy sideways market for the near future. However, additional poor economic data here in the states or more bad news out of Europe could easily push us over the edge. SPX closed at $1320, up $6 while RUT moved up $3 to close at $765. Trading volume was flat with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading today. Trading volume on the NYSE was down 2% and volume was up 8% on NASDAQ. VIX dropped a bit, closing at 19.7%.

The Case Schiller housing price index dropped 1.9% in April, but the market was expecting a worse number, so this actually buoyed some buying, especially in the home builders. Trading will likely remain subdued in advance of the European Summit, but this market is rather fragile. Ironically, no one really expects any permanent solutions to come out of the summit, but everyone is focused on it anyway. I wouldn't want to trade the markets based on a sideways prediction at this point. Any little news clip could tip it over.

My July iron condor on RUT at 610/620 and 850/860 is roughly unchanged with a net gain of 15% and delta = -$2 and theta = +$20 (on 20 contracts).