SPX opened this morning at Friday's close and ran strongly, breaking out above the 200 dma at $1382 and closing at $1387 for a gain of $27. RUT gapped open and ran up $15 to close at $792. But RUT has farther to go to find its 200 dma at $807. This spurt places RUT at the lower edge of its downward trend line. Most of the market's recent push upward appears to be based on the politicians "playing nice". But an increase in existing home sales also helped markets with an increase of 90k homes sold in October. The NAHB housing market index was released for November at 46, up 15% from the previous month. So the euphoria of today's market is based on a housing recovery and the prospect of a compromise that avoids the fiscal cliff.

The VIX dropped 1.2 points to 15.2%.

Before you start watching reruns of Happy Days, remember that nothing of substance has happened yet. In fact, many politicians are now clamoring for another stimulus package as part of the fiscal cliff solution. Spending one's self out of debt - that's an idea we haven't tried...

Perhaps the market can put together some gains for the rest of this year, but the prospects of a recession next year appear more and more unavoidable. My Dec iron condor stands at a net gain of $560 or +3% with a position delta of -$89 and position theta of +$103.