I missed yesterday's blog - it was the anniversary of my son's death and was also a busy day in the markets and my business. Consequently, by the time the markets closed, I was spent.

The big question in my mind is the title of this blog. After such a huge day last Thursday, it seems like all of the excitement about the Fed pumping up the market is spent. Markets were weak, both yesterday and today, but they aren't giving back much thus far. SPX closed down $2 at $1459 and RUT also gave up $2 to close at $857.  Trading volume in the S&P 500 dipped below the 50 dma to 2.4 billion shares today. Trading on the NYSE was flat and increased 15% on NASDAQ. The VIX is relatively low at 14.2% and actually decreased today, in a weak market. That tells me this market still has considerable underlying strength. SPX hit an intraday high around $1475 on Thursday but seems to be holding a solid support level around $1460. RUT broke its 2012 highs Thursday and appears to be establishing $855 as the near-term support. The $840 level was the support level defined before Thursday's run upward.

FedEx warned that they are seeing signs of a global slowdown, but that didn't seem to have a significant effect on the markets. Markets strengthened from about 2 pm ET through the close. There wasn't much in the way of economic data today; we get housing starts and building permits tomorrow.

My Sept iron condor position is essentially complete; assuming the remaining 790/800 put spreads expire worthless, I will take a loss of $4,680 on 20 contracts or 27% on capital at risk. That drops my year to date performance back to a 30% gain. I didn't control my losses on this position as well as I would have liked; I gave back two months of gains. The October condor stands at a net P/L of -$1,580 with delta = -$28 and theta = +$116. We have repositioned the call spreads to 900/910 and our maximum potential gain has been reduced to about 9%.

Isn't it about time for some dire news out of Europe?