It was a stellar day for the Dow as it rallied 437 points on very heavy volume. The advance/declines were about 2 to 1 positive. The summation index is now trying to turn back up. It looks like the democrats will gain control of Congress as the Georgia election results come in. I did not see that happening but what do I know? Evidently traders feel this will help the big caps. The S&P wasn't up as much as the Dow and the NASDAQ posted a loss. We'll see how things play out going forward. The futures last night sold off pretty hard but when the real trading started buying led the way. Volatility has ramped up to begin the new year and I'm not exactly sure what that means going forward. I can say that with the Democrats in charge we'll see the usual tax and spend type of program. The market usually does OK with a blue control of things. Running out of time in the January option cycle and I don't have any SPY trades in mind right now. GE was up over 1/2 on good volume. It is an old style big cap name. Gold got clobbered and lost $35 on the February futures. The US dollar was little changed by the end of the day. The XAU was actually up a point, while GDX shed a nickel. Volume was average. Gold has a big drop and the gold shares don't react? That is the kind of activity that keeps me in the GDX January call trade that I hold. It is about break even after todays price action. Still overbought for the gold shares but todays action has me thinking that the trade could still work. Gold made it all the way back to the breakout point at $1900 and bounced. That could have been the technical snap back that we were looking for before things get going higher again. Or not. Time will tell on this one. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was all over the place and finished with a slight drop. The short term indicators here are now mid-range. The VIX could go either way from here based on that. The S&P 500 short term technical indicators are still overbought but not extremely so. There's some unrest in the nations capitol today but I think that the market will be more focussed on the jobs report Friday. I'm still looking for higher prices but the price action outside of the Dow today wasn't that constructive in my view. Asia was mixed and Europe higher in last nights trade. We'll keep an eye on the overnight headlines.