The bulls took charge from the opening bell today and then tacked on a strong surge during the final hour of trading to complete a huge bullish run. SPX gained $25 to close at $1396. RUT traded up $17 to close at $831. SPX is trading in territory that it hasn't seen since early 2008. Consistent with the strong gain, VIX dropped below 14% intraday and closed at 14.8%. By contrast, RUT has yet to even close near the highs of 2011.

As always, the talking heads had many theories about the driving force behind such a strong move today. It isn't quite so obvious to me - if it were, I would have loaded up on calls yesterday. JPM announced a quarterly dividend and some interpreted that as an indicator that the government's bank stress test had gone well (and good results were announced after the close). Maybe that report was leaked early and that drove the bulls. Bernanke's remarks didn't appear to have much effect on the markets; the Fed's observations were very similar to previous reports. Nothing was revealed about any plans for future quantitative easing programs or whether that is even a possibility. Retail sales gained 1.1% in February and that beat analysts' estimates. But that report came out early, so the cause for the last hour's surge is a mystery.

My Apr iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$1,460 with delta = -$12 and theta = +$59. Today's move in RUT brings us back to the starting line for this position. The decline in IV also helps. Now the big question: will we see a bit of a pull back tomorrow after such a record day? We'll see. Fortunately, my delta neutral positions don't require me to predict that.