A day of hanging around before a long weekend as the Dow fell 165 points on average volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is still trying to head higher but stuck in a sideways crawl. The NASDAQ posted a gain on the session while the S&P 500 finished basically flat. The S&P is still short term overbought and is now up against the upper Bollinger band on the daily chart. I still think that we'll be moving higher from here so I did not purchase any SPY February puts heading into the weekend. That idea was simply insurance against any kind of surprise over the 3 day weekend. I could make a technical case for it as well but decided not to. Not to mention that there are only 4 days left in the February option cycle. My track record on the short term trades is not very good. Gold got clobbered today as the futures fell fifty bucks. There was also a dramatic one day reversal in silver. The US dollar was lower along with interest rates again. With both gold and the dollar down it appears that we are seeing an unwinding of the safe haven trade. Although usually a lower dollar is supportive of the price for gold. The XAU lost 6 1/4, while GDX fell 1 3/8. Volume was good to the downside. The short term indicators for GDX have now turned lower. I missed this trade as my orders for the GDX puts weren't filled and I canceled them. I'm not sure if this is the beginning of a sustained move lower for the gold shares or just a break in the ongoing up trend. I'll try and figure things out over the weekend. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and closed below the support at 15. Short term oversold but the VIX seems to be implying that it is heading lower. This would fit with my belief that stocks are moving higher from here with new all time highs in the S&P 500 along with the NASDAQ forthcoming. We'll see. An extra day to go over the charts this weekend but it looks like there will be no trades for me in the February option cycle. Asia and Europe ended the week on a mixed note. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.