Many traders, including me, have been expecting a big sell-off, but this market has held up pretty well. Even with the past few days of sideways trading, each time the bears tried to pull the markets down, they were rebuffed. Today was no different with SPX trading as low as $1397, but recovering to close at $1404, down $2 on the day. RUT lost $2 to close at $799. Trading volume continued to drop from last week's low levels with only 1.8 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading today. The only time this year that trading volume has been that low was the half day of trading before the July 4th holiday. Trading volume on the NYSE was down 13% and trading on NASDAQ was down 14%.

The VIX hit a historic low today; it closed at 13.7%. VIX has not closed at a lower value in all of 2011 and 2012. This seems to suggest a very high level of complacency - contrarians may regard this as a danger signal.

My September iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$480 with delta = -$80 and theta = +$89. Dropping IV has improved the position a bit. The call spreads are about one standard deviation OTM. This position is now 38 days from expiration; at this point, time is beginning to be on our side. If the news headlines continue to cooperate, maybe this market uptrend will continue higher. But I think it is fragile; be careful out there.