This market keeps teasing us. Some days, it plunges and all of the "sky is falling" folks come out of the woodwork. Then it rallies and the bulls speculate about new all-time highs. Today started out more bullishly, but then weakened and the major indexes ended the day slightly underwater. SPX lost $5 to close at $2093. RUT closed at $1229, down $3. Volatility rose about three tenths of a point to 12.8%, remaining close to the lows for volatility this year.

Trading volume remains close to the 50 dma with 2.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 companies. Trading volume on the NYSE dropped 2% and volume declined 1% on NASDAQ.

The only economic data today were factory orders, up 1.8%, a nice improvement from the 1.1% decline last month. Tomorrow brings the ADP private jobs data, a warm up for Friday's jobs report.

A common discussion these days concerns what the market's reaction will be when the Fed finally decides to raise interest rates. Will all of this sideways trading avoid a big drop when interest rates rise? Probably not. If nothing else, we will see the high frequency algorithms drive a knee jerk reaction downward. In the meantime, we wander sideways and my condors are doing well; my September position is up 21% and October is up 5%.