Choppy, lackluster trading marked the day as the Dow gained 73 points on light volume. The advance/declines were 2 to 1 positive. The summation index is trending in a sideways channel. Not much to write about todays market inaction. Just waiting for the new year to begin. I'd expect to see some more money flows beginning on Monday. Another holiday shortened week with the markets closed on Friday. Still short term overbought on the S&P 500 but that doesn't mean that we can't go higher. GE was up over 1/8 but the volume was very light. Gold found a bid today on a weaker US dollar. The precious metal futures rose almost $14. The XAU climbed 4 2/3, while GDX added over 3/4. Volume was light but it is a holiday week. My open order for the GDX January calls was never filled but it's still out there. This now looks like another trade that was missed. The short term technical indicators for GDX have turned up. I'm not sure if this is something that I want to chase or not. GDX is right up against its 50 day moving average which has turned it back before in recent trading. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and remains oversold. I'm not exactly sure what's next for the SPY. The Bollinger bands here and on some of the other major stock indices have contracted to the point that something is about to happen. The question is in which direction? You can make a case for either way. There's no overhead resistance and there should be plenty of money flowing at the beginning of next year. So it's pretty easy to make the bullish case. However sentiment is extremely positive and has no place to go but lower. I don't have any solid technical signals at the moment either way. There's still plenty of time in the January option cycle for a trade though. We'll let this holiday week complete itself and take it from there. Asia was mixed and Europe lower overnight. We'll finish the week and 2020 trading tomorrow.