The collective market appeared to hold its breath this morning waiting on some significant news embedded in the FOMC announcement. Immediately after the announcement, the talking heads started reading the tea leaves and the markets gyrated back and forth, but all of the major indexes closed down a bit on the day (except the Dow which is essentially unchanged, up $7). SPX closed at $1140, down $3 while RUT lost $5 to close at $665. SPX is holding above the significant resistance at $1131 it broke yesterday and RUT is holding just below the highs it set in mid-June and late July. So, it appears the market has stalled here. The Fed announcement didn't appear to say anything new. Bernanke and company have been talking about additional "quantitative easing" for some time now, but it all appears to be talk so far. Plus, I read considerable debate questioning the Fed's ability to actually prop up the markets. Many believe the FOMC language is designed to instill confidence and nothing more. So we sit and wait for some news event to push the market one way or the other. But don't be deceived by this market recent run upward; 27 states reported higher rates of unemployment in August. We are not out of the woods yet.

Our Oct position remains in jeopardy, but the delta of our Oct $690 calls has pulled back to 29, so I have decided to hold the call spreads open for now. The Oct iron condor stands at a P/L of -$2055 with position delta = -$69 and theta = +$113. A stalled market such as this is perfect for condor traders; it is just unfortunate it chose to stall so close to my call spreads.