The major market indexes traded higher today, but on lower volume. SPX gained $5 to close at $1689 but RUT closed unchanged at $1055. RUT's price behavior together with decreased trading volume suggests a slowing of this rally as traders look forward to the FOMC meeting next week. Trading in the S&P 500 stocks decreased to 2.0 billion shares while trading on the NYSE declined 12%. Trading volume on NASDAQ dropped 6%. As concern about Syria falls off, we may start to see increased taper anxiety in advance of the FOMC announcement and Bernanke news conference.

No substantial economic data were reported today. The big news was Apple's large drop in stock price to roughly where it was before Carl Icahn's famous tweet. In fact, Icahn said today on CNBC that he was buying more shares at this lower price. It will be interesting to see where this story goes.

My September iron condor on RUT stands near its maximum gain with a net P/L of $2,420 or +14% and a position delta of -$7 (nearly perfectly delta neutral) and position theta = +$49. The temptation at this point to close for much of the potential gain, but if you are trading larger numbers of contracts, the trading commission costs become an inhibiting factor. Allowing spreads to expire worthless is attractive as long as you don't allow that to draw you into taking too much risk. So we will watch these spreads closely between now and expiration next week and close if the market starts to threaten either side.