US equity indexes traded in a narrow range today and finished mixed ahead of Fed Wednesday. Our benchmark S&P 500 exhibited a bit of volatility in the first 90 minutes, hitting its intraday high and low about an hour apart. The index then struggled with yesterday's closing price during the lunch hour and again at the close. It managed to eke out a 0.03% gain as we move toward tomorrow's FOMC minutes and rate decision, expect by most analysts to remain unchanged.

The yield on the 10-year closed at 1.57%, down one basis point from the previous session.

Here is a snapshot of past five sessions in the S&P 500.

Here is a daily chart of the index. We've highlighted the unusually narrow pattern over the past nine sessions, both in closes and intraday trading ranges. Will the next significant move be up? or down? Stay tuned!

A Perspective on Drawdowns

Here's a snapshot of selloffs since the 2009 trough.

Here is a more conventional log-scale chart with drawdowns highlighted.

Here is a linear scale version of the same chart with the 50- and 200-day moving averages.

A Perspective on Volatility

For a sense of the correlation between the closing price and intraday volatility, the chart below overlays the S&P 500 since 2007 with the intraday price range. We've also included a 20-day moving average to help identify trends in volatility.