It seems as though much of the financial news for the past few months has been about the market waiting on something: FOMC meetings, ECB meetings, jobs reports, an announcement of QE III, etc. Now we are supposedly waiting on the ECB meeting tomorrow, but I doubt anything of substance can come of that until the German courts rule on the constitutionality of the bail-out funds. Then we will be waiting on the jobs report Friday; then we will wait on the FOMC meeting next week. Why do traders appear to be so indecisive and tentative? That's a tough question to answer, but here's my stab at it. I believe traders, regardless of their political stripes, realize this economy is in the toilet and isn't showing any signs of improving anytime soon. On the other hand, the large corporations that make up our stock market shed people several years ago when this economic spiral started; they have reduced their costs and continue to make reasonable profits, although revenue growth is hard to find. So there isn't a strong case to either buy or sell this market. Layer the election uncertainties on top of that and you have a lot of traders hiding under their desks. They alternate between fear of missing out on gains and fear of losing their clients' money. So many are jumping in and out of the market like the nervous chipmunks scurrying around my back yard. And many are simply sitting in cash, waiting for "normalcy" to return. But I think that is wishful thinking - we are in a "new normal".

SPX chopped sideways throughout the day, closing down $2 at $1403 and RUT lost $1 to close at $821. Trading volume was flat with 2.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading on the NYSE was up 4% and trading volume on NASDAQ was down 2%.

Tomorrow brings the ADP private payrolls number, which many will take as a precursor to Friday's non-farm payrolls report. Chances are these data will simply support the muddling along we have seen in recent months: not a disaster but certainly not evidence of a strong recovery either.

My Sept iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of -$720 with position delta = -$148 and position theta = +$157. The October condor stands roughly at break-even with delta = -$52 and theta = +98. Non-directional trading looks pretty good in these choppy markets. So we wait on the other shoe to drop...