The markets opened lower primarily over concerns over European sovereign debt, especially Ireland's situation. But unlike other recent days, there was no bounce in the first few minutes; the market plunged all morning and then traded largely sideways the rest of the day. SPX lost $19 to close at $1178. RUT closed at $705, down $15. This places both of these indexes well into the consolidation range in October that preceded the run-up from anticipation of the Fed's quantitative easing operations. The bad news is that there is room to drop before we hit support for SPX in the area of $1165 and RUT at approximately $690. Today's severe drop occurred with increased volume, which underscores the bearishness of the recent moves downward. Over 4.3 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks traded today, well above the 50 dma at 3.6 billion shares. Trading on the NYSE increased a whopping 51% and it increased 19% on NASDAQ. Commodities were also down today, including a 2.3% drop in gold.

I closed half of the put spreads in my Dec iron condor on RUT and also hedged the position. At the close, this position stood at a P/L of +$265 with a delta = -$27 and theta = +$15. I will give this market a few days to settle down before entering new put spreads. I closed all of my GOOG spreads today, but I am still holding several AAPL positions. So now we watch to see where the bottom of this move may be.