The markets were barely in positive territory today until after Bernanke's press conference and the release of the FOMC policy statement. But traders sold off after Bernanke's remarks with all of the major indexes closing the day for losses. SPX closed down $8 at $1287 and RUT lost $7 to close at $800. Trading volume was down from yesterday's low levels with 2.4 billion shares of the S&P 500 traded. Volume was up 2% on the NYSE and down 13% on NASDAQ. Perhaps significantly, in spite of the late sell-off, the VIX actually closed down a bit to 18.5%. That VIX reading, together with the trading volume, tells me that the institutional players weren't very concerned about anything Bernanke had to say. There wasn't much new in Bernanke's news conference or the policy statement. Interest rates will remain low; the unemployment rate will remain high for an extended period of time; GDP growth will remain modest, but positive.

The SPX price chart remains in a down trend; the top edge of the trend line is around $1310, so we will have to see the index break out above $1310 decisively before we can declare this correction to be "over". Caution remains the prudent course of action. My iron condor positions are in excellent shape at this point, but they aren't exciting; I am just watching them make money slowly. The July iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$2,580 with delta = +$8 and theta = +$78. The put spreads are over two standard deviations OTM and the call spreads are over 1.5 standard deviations OTM. The Aug condor stands at a P/L of +$760 with delta = -$24 and theta = +$64.

Greece has faded from the headlines for now, but a general feeling of negativity and pessimism persists. Perhaps we will have a low volume, sideways market for the summer. From a historical basis, that scenario has a lot of precedent.