The deal market seems healthy enough, and we've seen a surge in August. Global merger volume totaled nearly $730 billion in the third quarter, up 43 percent from a year earlier, according to Dealogic data.

So what's going on? Obviously, industry investment bankers are as busy as ever, and that has resulted in a spate of strategic deals. Southwest Airlines said this week it will acquire AirTran for about $1.4 billion. There are, no doubt, more deals  in the pipeline. There are also some fascinating hostile deals underway, Hertz and Avis, for example, continue to jockey in their bid to win control of Dollar Thrifty. Big technology firms have also returned to the deal market.

So does all this activity presage a huge boom coming soon? Not necessarily. But the conditions for more deals are certainly in place. Private equity firms still have a lot of dry powder. And banks are once again willing to finance deals. On top of that, strategic buyers, perhaps sense more sponsored deals, may feel a sense of urgency to get a deal done now. Most deals will likely be small-ish by historical standards.

Timothy Ingrassia, head of mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) suggested, at a recent conference covered by the New York Times, that big club deals are still possible but also that "right now, that dynamic, creating consortia and having buyers back in unity to get something done, may be the most difficult piece of the deal, while six months ago I would absolutely say that financing was the most difficult part of the deal."

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