Weakness in the financial stocks was triggered by CIT's announcement that it is delaying its quarterly filing. The selling spread across the board, but significant support levels were held; the SPX closed at $994 and RUT closed at $562. A common explanation among the talking heads was that the market was waiting on the FOMC announcement tomorrow afternoon. I am more inclined to see this as a needed breather from the incredible rally over the past several weeks. Trading has remained in a reasonably tight range over the past few sessions and even on down days like today, no heavy broad based selling has broken out. That tells me that the large institutional players may be taking some very selective profits, but, in general, are not selling. Of course, the wrong comments from the Feds tomorrow could change that situation very quickly.

This pullback to $562 today removed some of the pressure on my August condor; the position P/L improved to -$1,640 with delta = -$51 and theta = +$172. My short 590 calls are now more than one standard deviation OTM with nine days remaining.

I had my doubts about initiating my Sept iron condor today with the FOMC meeting in progress. So I compromised and established 10 contracts of the 620/630 calls for $1.00 and 10 contracts of the 500/510 put spreads for $1.30 for a total credit of $2,300. I intend to add 10 more contracts after the announcement tomorrow or later this week. This position has a delta = -$4 and theta = +$55 with 37 days to expiration. I positioned the short strikes just outside of one standard deviation.