The markets were trading sideways today until traders heard Bernanke's remarks to the Senate Banking Committee. To my mind, it wasn't surprising that he was unwilling to specify actions and a timeline for further monetary stimulus, or speculate on Fed actions given various scenarios for the economy. Bernanke and his predecessors have always been very careful with their words because they are keenly aware how much their words can move markets. But traders may have focused on Bernanke's assessment of the economic outlook as "uncertain", but that language was almost verbatim from the FOMC minutes.

RUT dropped $12 to close at $613 while the SPX gave up $14 to close at $1070. The SPX just barely pushed past the 50 dma at $1087 intraday before pulling back. You will recall that SPX stalled at the 50 dma in mid-July. This tentative, indecisive market action is good for my Aug iron condor on RUT, with a P/L of -$750, delta = -$14 and theta = +$125. All of our call and put spreads are now over one standard deviation OTM with 29 days to expiration.