The markets traded back down today as some of the news from Europe wasn't reassuring. One finance minister meeting was cancelled and traders feared the scheduled summit might also be rescheduled. Some analysts also predicted that no firm solutions to the European debt are expected anytime soon. Perhaps the markets got a little ahead of themselves over the past couple of weeks? SPX dropped $25 to close at $1229 while RUT closed at $714, down $22. Today's drop on SPX returns us to the support level at $1230; it will be interesting to see if SPX opens below $1230 in the morning. If so, we may retest some of the recent lows. The price action on RUT was even more ugly today - RUT gave back all of yesterday's gains to place this index firmly back within the trading range of the past few months. Trading volume was flat on the S&P 500 with 3.3 billion shares trading; trading volume on the NYSE increased 9% while volume on NASDAQ dropped 6%.

Today's economic news was disheartening, but probably had minimal effect on traders who are preoccupied with Europe. The Case-Shiller housing price index dropped 3.8% in August and  consumer confidence numbers dropped to 39.8 for August from September's 46.4.

I removed the hedges on my Nov RUT condor position; it now stands at a P/L = +$200 with delta = -$61 and theta = +$183. So now we watch to see if we have returned to the trading range. Given the continuing uncertainty in Europe, it certainly seems logical to expect our markets to remain trapped in this trading range.