It is becoming dangerous to be long the markets during the last hour of trading. The markets were modestly up and chopped sideways most of the day, became even more choppy after the FOMC announcement and then sold off in the last hour to close nearly unchanged for the day. SPX closed at $1242, up $1 and RUT lost less than a dollar to close at $772. Trading volume was flat to down with 3.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading (below the 50 dma). Trading on the NYSE was up 1% and trading on NASDAQ was up 3%. The Fed announcement didn't reveal anything new, but did result in some choppy trading immediately afterward. Volatility swung up, down, and then back up, to close unchanged at 17.6%.

My Jan SPX iron condor remains at about -$2500 with delta = -$64 and theta = +$84. The 1300/1310 call spreads are about one standard deviation OTM. I closed Dec condors on AAPL and GOOG for gains of about 23%. The question remains whether this market has any more upside left in 2010. Recent gains have brought on bouts of profit taking to hold the overall market in check. Historically, the markets have not trended strongly in either direction the last couple of weeks of the year.