Traders appeared to be anticipating some good news from the release of the Fed's beige book this afternoon. The SPX traded upward in the early afternoon, but then steadily declined after the release of the FOMC minutes (the beige book). SPX closed up $1 at $1410 on lower volume. RUT advanced $4 to close at $818. During the trading session, RUT traded up to resistance at $820 before pulling back. Trading volume was weak across the board with 1.8 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading volume dropped 2% on the NYSE and declined 7% on NASDAQ.

The VIX rose 0.6 points to close at 17.1%. VIX has steadily rose from an intraday low of 13.5% to today's 17% over the past eight trading sessions. This suggests traders are getting nervous as the markets keeping bouncing off resistance and not breaking out to new highs. This move higher in VIX, coupled with low trading volume suggests the bulls are losing their conviction to drive this market.

My Sept iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of -$500 with delta = -$124 and theta = +$124. The Oct condor stands at break-even with delta = -$34 and theta = +$85.

Is this the calm before the storm?