SPX ran up to $1410 today, but was promptly pulled back to close unchanged at $1404. RUT lost $3 to close at $797. The market appears to have stalled and the longer it sits right here, the more likely a pullback becomes. Today's SPX candlestick was closer to a dojo than an evening star, the former indicative of indecision and the latter a classic signal of the top of a trend. VIX jumped up a bit today, closing at 14.9%, up over one point. But this is still a relatively low level of volatility. Trading volume jumped up from the very low levels of Monday, but remains relatively low at  2.1 billion shares of the S&P 500, but the 50 dma = 2.6B. Trading volume increased 17% on the NYSE and increased 16% on NASDAQ.

Retail sales for July increased 0.8% - a big change from last month's 0.7% decrease. PPI came in at +0.4% for July; the CPI is due tomorrow. For now, inflation appears well contained. I must admit to surprise - how can all of this printing of money have not led to inflation? I am not an economist, but maybe it is difficult to have inflation when the economy is struggling so badly that the pundits argue with each other about whether we are in recession already or about to enter a recession.

I hope you are invested in GOOG and AAPL; they are having strong rallies as the overall market slogs sideways.

My Sept iron condor on RUT at 650/660 and 850/860 stands at a net gain of $580 with position delta = -$66 and position theta = +$92 on 20 contracts.

A reminder for those of you with index option positions: for options with am settlement (most of the broad index options), Thursday will be the last day you may close your positions. If you are in doubt about the settlement specifications for your option, check the web site of the exchange that creates your option, e.g., CBOE for SPX.