The markets were fairly calm today, the major indexes were never more than +/- 0.75% at any point during the trading session. To the right you can see the daily chart of the S&P 500. Volume was weaker than average, I think this probably has to do with either the long weekend coming up or the amount of uncertainty stemming from the Russia/Georgia crisis among many other things. There are a few key things to watch out for during the remainder of this trading week:

• Wednesday - Crude oil inventory report and refinery utilization report
• Thursday - Preliminary GDP estimate
• Thursday - Natural gas inventory report
• Friday - Consumer sentiment report

I definitely would not be surprised if you saw massive volatility around 10:35am on Wednesday and Thursday. The energy markets this week has been affected by the Russia/Georgia situation taking suffering larger declines than any other sector.

Bernanke and the Federal Reserve released their minutes today and it seems almost a guarantee that they will be holding the Federal Funds Rate at 2% at the next meeting on September the 16th. This news shouldn’t weigh on the markets for the rest of this week and I would expect that Thursday’s GDP number will be much more important.

The airlines are having problems again and a glitch in the flight control systems caused a number of delays and cancellations today. Delta Airlines (DAL: 7.94, -0.43 (-5.14%)) was down big along with US Air (LCC: 7.34, -0.44 (-5.66%)) and the rest of the sector. These stocks have actually bounced way off of their annual lows but I would be very cautious going forward because if crude races back up I would expect these stocks to race down even faster.

Mattel Inc. (MAT: 20.24, +0.10 (+0.50%)) won only $100 million dollars in their Bratz lawsuit after hours and the stock closed the extended trading session down $0.29 to $19.95. If this sort of news doesn’t move the stock price that much I doubt we are going to see a ton of stock specific volatility going forward.