Traders sold off pretty strongly today, probably in anticipation of Germany's Parliament voting on the European bailout proposal tomorrow. It's hard to predict how the markets will respond if the bailout proposal fails to get through the parliament. Will we break through the bottom of this trading range? SPX lost $24 to close at $1151 while RUT lost even more, closing down $28 at $652. RUT had set a low end of the range around $650 but broke through to about $635 last Thursday, so today's close at $652 is near the low end of the recent trading range. By contrast, SPX is just below the midpoint of its recent trading range. Trading volume declined again today with 3.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading, well below the 50 dma. Trading volume was also down on the NYSE and NASDAQ, down 11% and 8%, respectively.

AMZN was one of very few stocks that posted gains today; they introduced their new tablet computer, Kindle Fire. They hope to compete with Apple's iPad, but the competitive landscape is littered with the corpses of the other wanna-be tablets. AMZN hit a 52 week high today at $230 and will announce earnings Oct. 20. That might present some interesting trading opportunities.

My Oct iron condor remains "half a man" with only the 500/510 put spreads. I missed the opportunity yesterday to get the call spreads in place. But with RUT's weakness today, I am glad to at least be safely OTM. Tomorrow's market is bound to be a roller coaster ride based on news from Europe. It will be interesting.