A down day to begin the week as the Dow fell 122 points on average volume.  The advance/declines were over 2 to 1 negative.  This should turn the summation index back down.  It could have been worse as we were off over 200 points in the morning.  Not sure if this is the beginning of something sustained to the downside or just a Monday sell off after the weekend of Trumps tweets.  We'll know more in the coming days.  I did place an order for the SPY February calls but wasn't filled.  I may leave an open order in overnight.  I do think that perhaps Wednesday after the Fed is the ideal time to try this trade but that's a guess as usual.  GE was off a nickel and the volume wasn't anything special.  There is a potential double bottom on the daily chart for GE but it is short term in duration.  I'm considering the March calls here now in order to give the trade a chance to work out.  Gold was up a few bucks on the futures as the US dollar was little changed.  The XAU and GDX had slight fractional losses on light volume.  There just is not a lot of interest in gold at this time.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  The S&P 500 had a good volume breakout form the recent congestion zone and today we had a snap back to the congestion zone.  Conventional technical analysis implies that we will now trend higher.  I am a believer in that view.  There is a possibility that today was the chance to get long and we will simply move up from here.  My hope is that we'll see some listless trading ahead of the Fed and then perhaps there will be a chance to purchase the SPY February calls.  The short term technical indicators for the S&P 500 did roll over today.  We also saw a spike in the VIX but it did finish well off its highs for the session.  Plenty to think about tonight.  Most Asian markets were closed last night but the NIKK was lower.  Europe was down overnight as well.  We'll close out the month of January tomorrow.