The markets opened down this morning and after chopping sideways for a couple of hours, they headed higher. But a large sell-off late in the day brought the major indexes back to where they started. SPX closed unchanged at $1165 and RUT closed at $693, also unchanged for the day. The SPX candlestick for today was the classic doji, often suggesting a turning point based on the indecision or stalemate between the bulls and the bears suggested by the day's trading pattern. However, trading volume fell way off, making it dangerous to base any predictions on today's price movement. Trading in the S&P 500 stocks dropped to 2.5 billion shares, way below the 50 dma at 3.3 billion shares. Similarly, trading on the NYSE was down 12% and down 23% on NASDAQ.

My Oct iron condor on RUT continues its underwater journey, although each day is helping the position due to its +$325 theta. The Nov condor is in fairly good shape with a P/L of -$1310, delta = -$84 and theta = +$92. The fact that delta is of the same order of magnitude as theta shows that the position is on the edge of requiring adjustment if RUT trades higher.

I think traders are still trying to sort out whether Friday's jobs report was bad news or good news. In any case, today's market couldn't find a direction.