Treading water today with the exception of the NASDAQ as the Dow fell 68 points on average volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is now moving higher. Sideways trading action this Thursday ahead of option expiration. It's also before a long holiday weekend in the US as the markets will be closed on Monday. The NASDAQ fell the most today and that is not a plus for the bulls. The S&P 500 had a small loss as it is right up against the longer term down trend line on a daily basis. The short term indicators here are at mid-range. My guess is that we'll get through that line in short order but maybe not tomorrow. Sometime next week at the latest or else my prognosis here is wrong. I also believe we are in the beginning of a multi-week rally for the S&P. Gold was up $30 on the futures. The US dollar was slightly lower along with interest rates. The XAU and GDX had fractional losses on light volume. That is two days in a row now that gold had good moves higher and the gold shares basically did nothing. Not a good sign for the gold share bulls. I'm on the sidelines with regards to trading the GDX options for now. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was a bit higher today as it stalls on both the 50 and 200 day moving averages. No clear signal from the short term indicators here. The game plan for now is to let expiration Friday pass and head into the February option cycle which has an extra week on it. So premiums will be high. I'll be looking at the SPY calls again as I think that we are heading to new all time highs for the S&P. I could be wrong. Europe and Asia finished higher. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.