Starting the week on a positive note as the Dow gained 116 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is still moving sideways. The overall market was much stronger than the Dow and that is a plus for the bulls. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 are turning back up but we do remain overbought there. Janet Yellen, remember her? She's back, this time as Secretary of the US Treasury. Today she claimed that interest rates will remain low forever basically. We'll see what the bond market has to say about that. Regardless, stocks liked what they heard today. We are entering what is usually a seasonal period of weakness for stocks. We'll see what transpires this year. GE was up a dime on kind of light volume. Gold was up a couple bucks on the futures and the US dollar was lower. The XAU rose 1 1/2, while GDX added 1/3. Volume was what passes for average here these days. The gold shares are oversold and I'm getting a buy signal on multiple timeframes for GDX. The options are pricey but I am probably going to put in an overngiht order for the GDX February calls. This will be a hard trade for me to do because there is no reason that the gold shares simply can't continue lower as well. But the technicals say give it a try here so we'll see what happens. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today but did close above the 50 day moving average. The market will probably be driven by earnings for the rest of the week since there isn't much on the economic data front due. Of course there's always headline risk out there. Fear of some kind of mass uprising during tomorrows presidential inauguration dominates the news. However like I've already stated, this notion seems like the least likely outcome to me. My guess is that is will be business as usual thanks to an overkill of military and police forces. Whatever it takes. The markets will forget about it by the close tomorrow. Perhaps my bullish stance and look for new all time highs will come this week. Asia was higher with the exception of China, while Europe was lower. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.