The markets were fueled this morning by a surprising 10% increase in the sales of existing homes for September. But the increase was short lived and most of the gains were lost as the markets pulled back and traded sideways most of the day. The SPX closed at $1186, up $3 after trading as high as $1196. RUT closed up $4 at $708. Trading volume was up from Friday; 3.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks traded, just above the 50 dma at 3.5 billion shares. Trading was up 27% on the NYSE and up 4% on NASDAQ. SPX has been trading in the range of $1165 to $1185 for the last 2-3 weeks. Today's early rise in SPX brought out the bears to pull it back down into this trading range. Since much of the recent bullishness has been driven by expectations of the Fed initiating another round of quantitative easing, perhaps the markets will trade sideways until the next FOMC announcement November 3. And, of course, the election results constitute another potentially market moving event; so November 3 is shaping up to be a volatile day in the markets with election results in the morning and the Fed announcement in the afternoon.

My Nov condor on RUT continues to sit in the middle of the adjustment range on the call side with the delta of the Nov $740 calls at 25. This position is hedged with Dec $740 calls and has a position delta of -$57 and theta = +$77. The Dec iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of -$120, delta = -$24 and theta = +$115. We may see the markets largely trade sideways until November 3. But we will trade our condors on the basis of what the market does today, not what we think it should do.