I enjoy roller coasters, but not with my money! Early this morning, I checked Asian and European markets and they were mostly in positive territory. Then I saw that the S&P futures were up nearly ten points, so that was reassuring after the market weakness of the past two days. When you add in my general skepticism about lower oil prices causing market weakness, you may imagine that I was feeling smug this morning as SPX opened and traded up to $2057. But then the bottom fell out of the market about 11 am ET and fell to the intraday low of $2008 by 2:15 pm ET. That was a 2% swing! We normally think we have seen a strong market move when we see a one percent move one way or the other over a day's trading. Today we witnessed a 2% move within about three hours. That puts a new definition on a volatile market.

SPX closed down $5 at $2023, but RUT managed to hang onto a fifty cent gain, closing at $1181. Volatility spiked up almost a full point to 21.1%, close to the closing price of VIX at 21.1% one week ago. I thought that was the volatility peak, and therefore the market low, but maybe not.

Trading volume popped up today with 2.5 billion shares of the S&P 500 stocks trading. Likewise, trading was up 22% on the NYSE and 16% on NASDAQ. That was probably due to traders scrambling as the market whipsawed up and then back down.

The JOLTS job opening report came in at 4.97 million job openings for November, up almost 3% from October.

So where does this leave us? Good question. I take some reassurance from RUT's relative strength, but this market's volatility is unnerving. Perhaps we are seeing a choppy sideways market, but one where the chop is higher than normal, or at least what we thought was normal. In times like these, I prefer non-directional trading, although the adjustments are more difficult. The spreads of my Jan SPX iron condor at 1940/1950 and 2160/2170 will expire worthless, but the adjustments as the market whipsawed me back and forth chewed up my potential gains; this position will post a 6% loss. My RUT Feb iron condor at 1070/1080 and 1300/1310 stands at a net 4% gain.