What a difference a year makes! Remember the first trading day of 2013? It was as strong a spike upward as was today's downward push. SPX closed down $16 or 0.9% at $1832 and RUT dropped $13 or 1.1% to close at $1151. The fact that RUT decreased more than SPX underscores the bearish move, but it is far too early to put on the bear suit. RUT bounced off support at $1147, the high set on November 29th. The parallel support level on SPX is at $1810, and we are not even close to that level. Volatility has risen the past three trading days and gapped open higher this morning, with VIX closing up a half point to 14.2%. But that remains a relatively low volatility historically. Many of us may be expecting a correction and even arguing it is overdue, but today's price action doesn't necessarily signal the beginning of a correction. This could be a more benign cooling of the market exuberance via a period of sideways to slightly downward trading. But the memories of last year are fresh - every one of those dips last year were buying opportunities as the bulls roared back.

Trading volume was up today with 1.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 stock trading, but these increases are off low holiday numbers (the 50 dma for volume on the S&P 500 is 2.1B). Trading volume was up 17% on the NYSE and up 27% on NASDAQ.

My Jan iron condor on RUT is positioned at 1110/1120 and 1175/1185 with a net P/L of - $3,900 on 20 contracts or -22% with position delta of -$65 and position theta = +$270. This position still retains a good profit potential but has been adjusted and repositioned as the market charged forward after the Fed announcement. So it remains underwater from the adjustments and we'll see where this one ends up.

I have read many year end summaries of the 2013 markets and the common denominator of these articles is that it was an odd, outlier of a year. Hedge funds and other professional traders had a tough year. The huge 30% gains of the S&P 500 are deceptive. Very few traders achieved those gains. The markets of 2013 threw traders for a loop with several 4-5% pullbacks that were immediately reversed into the stratosphere. It was a tough year to trade. Hopefully, 2014 will be friendlier to us.