Bernanke's comments to the effect that another round of quantitative easing was not in the works appeared to impact the markets negatively today, but one has to wonder if this is only a transient effect. I am inclined to think it was a knee-jerk reaction that is likely to be reversed tomorrow. SPX lost $7 to close at $1366 and RUT lost $13 to close at $811. But SPX is still well above the significant level of support at $1340, so it is much too soon to call it a correction (even though everyone is expecting one). Trading volume spiked up with 3.3 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading increased 27% on the NYSE and increased 18% on NASDAQ.

Economic news was actually pretty positive today with 3% growth in GDP reported for the fourth quarter and the Chicago PMI increased to 64.0 from 60.2. But those positive numbers appeared to be ignored by the traders today.

My Mar iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$1,870 with delta = -$8 and theta = +$183. Today's move downward on RUT took this position back to delta neutral, which accounts for the large improvement in its profitability. But we'll see what tomorrow brings - it is too early to count our gains for March..