The major market indexes continue to basically trade sideways, but when one backs up and looks at the longer term trend, it still looks like a bull market. The S&P 500 is up about 16% this year, which is much, much better than last year's flat performance. But many traders, including me, are nervous. There are many reasons to worry about this market, but it seems to be climbing the proverbial wall of worry. SPX dropped off $3 to close at $1457 and RUT lost $4 to close at $852. Trading volume was naturally down a lot after expiration Friday with 2.2 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; trading on the NYSE was down 51% and trading volume on NASDAQ was down 27%. The VIX is holding up rather well; it closed essentially unchanged today at 14.2%.

RUT is starting to give back much of Bernanke's rally from last week, but SPX is holding most of those gains intact. There wasn't any economic data of import today; some talking heads claimed today's market weakness was due to Europe's economic woes returning to the forefront. But I couldn't find any news stories behind those suppositions. Maybe traders are just feeling the same way I am - there is so much bad stuff either going on (like Europe) or in the near future (like the fiscal cliff), I just find myself half expecting the other shoe to drop at some point. But so far, that has been dead wrong.

My October RUT iron condor stands at a net P/L of -$400 with delta = +$7 and theta = +$105. So this position looks pretty good - unless that crash I fear comes to pass...