As the market sold off into the close, I was reminded of poor Charlie Brown as Lucy pulled the football back just as he tried to kick it - once again. This morning, it appeared as though we had settled near a bottom to this correction, but we were fooled once again. The extreme volatility of this market was again demonstrated today; this was the twentieth triple digit move on the Dow in twenty eight sessions. The markets opened soft this morning and traded choppily around the unchanged line most of the morning; but in the early afternoon, a sell-off began that went all the way into the close. All of the major indexes closed near or at the lows for the day. SPX broke through the closing lows set earlier this year in February. RUT is still well above its February lows at about $587.

RUT closed down $15 at $618 while the SPX closed at $1057, a drop of $14 on the day.  Trading volume declined from yesterday, suggesting that the large institutions and funds aren't actively closing their positions. Trading volume dropped 11% on the NYSE  and 6% on NASDAQ. The S&P 500 stocks traded about 4.5 billion shares, below Friday's volume and below the 50 day moving average. The now common question of whether this is a correction in a bull market trend or the beginning of a bear market continues to be debated, but it appears as though more analysts are piling onto the bear trend side of the debate and predicting lower lows.

Today's late breakout to the downside forced my hand on the June condor position, so I purchased July $600 puts to hedge the downside; this move adjusted my greeks to a more acceptable delta = +$28 and theta = +$100. The July condor stands at breakeven with a position delta = +$23 and position theta = +$74. So, once again, we wait to see what this market will give us tomorrow.