A day of running in place today as the Dow dropped half a point on good volume.  The advance/declines were 2 to 1 positive.  The summation index is trying to turn back up.  The overall market was stronger than the Dow.  Nothing new on the headline front.  The short term technical indicators for the S&P 500 remain overbought.  I am still holding on to the SPY February puts and they continue to show a loss.  This trade is running out of time and only a sharp substantial drop will do me any good.  I suppose that I'll wait and see how it goes tomorrow.  GE lost a few cents on average volume.  Gold fell six bucks and the US dollar was slightly lower.  The XAU and GDX were both little changed on very light volume.  The Bollinger bands for the XAU have contracted to the point of forecasting a big move coming there soon.  Perhaps the GDX call trade should be put on again.  For now I'm on the sidelines there.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  The VIX continues to hover around its 200 day moving average.  This condition won't last forever.  The break one way or the other will tell a lot about the markets near term direction.  You can't really argue with the new all time highs that we're setting in some of the major averages though.  With the over the counter market leading the way here, the case for higher prices going forward is not out of the question.  The Fed spoke today and will finish tomorrow.  What was said today had no effect on the market.  The China virus doesn't seem to be a concern and trade tensions have disappeared for now.  As long a breadth remains positive the path of least resistance is higher.  Europe and Asia were up in last nights trade.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.