The markets are hanging in there at these relatively elevated levels. SPX closed at $1461, up $2 and RUT dropped $1 to close at $856. As I was looking over the SPX chart a few minutes ago, it struck me how much of a step-wise pattern SPX has traded in for the past six weeks or so. SPX managed to break $1400 in early August but then just traded sideways until early September when Draghi's press conference comments propelled SPX to about $1435. But then we trade sideways until Bernanke, not to be outdone by Draghi, gives the market a boost and sends it to $1460. And here we are, almost a week later, trading sideways at about $1460. What does that tell us? I think it shows the remarkable support behind this market. Have we solved the European debt crisis? Has the economic recovery in the states started to accelerate? Has unemployment started returning to "normal" levels? Has the dreaded and much talked about fiscal cliff problem been solved? In spite of all of those rather significant economic "issues", the market's rally is intact (in my corporate career, we were always counseled to cast "problems" as "issues" in our management discussions). This bull market is not to be denied. Consistent with that view, the VIX dropped again today to 13.9%.

Trading volume rose slightly with 2.6 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading (the 50 dma = 2.5B); trading on the NYSE rose 1% and volume on NASDAQ rose 9%.

We had another dose of mediocre economic data today. Housing starts for August came in at 750k, up a bit from the previous month's 733k. Building permits dropped form 811k to 803k, but existing home sales rose from 4.47M to 4.82M.

My October iron condor position stands at a P/L of -$1,480 with position delta = -$27 and position theta = +$119. The 900/910 calls and the 790/800 puts are both about one standard deviation or more OTM with thirty days to go to expiration.

In the "interesting observations" column, I have entered a wide OTM butterfly spread on AAPL each summer for the past several years using January LEAPS options. Each year, AAPL has run too far, too fast and I have been forced to close the spread early - a nice gain, but not the great gain planned if we had made it to January. So this year, I entered the 670/750/830 call butterfly with Dec options, but AAPL has already broken through $700 and shows every sign of trying for $750 earlier than December. We're up 49% but it looks like we may be closing early once again this year. You will be telling your grandchildren about trading Apple back in the old days - it is an amazing story.