One of my favorite magazines growing up was Mad Magazine and "What, me worry?" was the tag line for the satirical magazine. Now some of you are applauding my choice of that magazine and some are thinking you now understand why I need professional help - it was that kind of magazine; you either loved it or hated it.

The markets opened up in positive territory today and then moved even higher after some encouraging news from the discussions (too polite a word) in Washington concerning the debt ceiling. SPX gained $21 to close at $1327 while RUT closed at $835, up $19. But today's strong surge seemed surprising after so many days of pessimism and disaster scenarios being played out by all of the Chicken Littles on CNBC. The same very real and very serious issues remain, but we traded higher - happy days are here again. Trading volume bounced up as well with 3 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading; the 50 dma = 2.8B. Volume was up 7% on NASDAQ but flat on the NYSE.

After hours, AAPL is trading around $400 after another stellar quarter. The Jan 2012 350/400/450 butterfly we have in our trading group will get a nice boost tomorrow, but this move came too soon. If AAPL continues on upward, we will have to close this trade early. That is the problem with options trading; you have to predict the price and the timing of the move. I thought $400 was a reasonable target for year-end. But what am I complaining about - we are making money.

My Aug iron condor on RUT stands at a P/L of +$862 with a position delta of -$65 and position theta of +$110. So now it will be interesting to see how long we can go without the malaise of Euro zone debt, unemployment, etc. catching up with us again.