The markets were trading weakly sideways most of the day but traded off strongly in the last hour based on Moodys downgrading several German banks and Fitch warning that US banks may be downgraded if the Euro Zone debt issues aren't handled promptly. SPX dropped $21 to $1237 and RUT closed at $730, down $13. Trading volume jumped up with 3.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading was up 14% on the NYSE and up 16% on NASDAQ. The VIX was down to 30% early in the day, but spiked up to 33.5% by the close.

The CPI rose 0.1% in October; industrial production rose 0.7% and capacity utilization rose to 77.8% in October from last month's 77.3%. These are pretty anemic numbers, but they aren't terrible either - pretty much the same picture that the economic data have been painting for the past couple of months.

The markets remain trapped in this trading range. Larry McMillan put it best, "The market has become a volatile, trendless entity." But watch out; at times like these, the markets often break out very strongly one way or the other.

My Nov condor stands at a P/L of +$1,120 with delta = $2 and theta = +$885. It appears likely that I will allow both the call and put spreads to go into expiration to expire worthless. The Dec position stands at a P/L of +$380 with delta = -$27 and theta = +$115.

I am out at the Traders Expo and hope to see many of you there. Please look me up.