Another day of crosscurrents as the Dow gained 90 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is beginning to move sideways. Once again the overall market was weaker than the Dow with the NASDAQ the lead underperformer. We're not seeing the usual expiration week positive bias. The market is starting to feel heavy here but I'm still a believer in higher prices before the week is out. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought. Retail sales came in better than expected thanks to the stimulus checks. The Fed minutes were a yawn. GE was off 1/8 on light volume. Gold looks like it is in free fall as the futures dropped another twenty bucks. The US dollar was higher. The XAU lost 2 1/2, while GDX shed 7/8. Volume was good. The GDX February calls I purchased yesterday are solid losers. I don't even think that a good earnings showing tomorrow can save this ill timed trade. The short term technical indicators for GDX are pointing down and are not yet oversold. I don't know what I was thinking when I tried this short term trade yesterday. Trying to make up for the other losing trade in GDX? Hoping that gold would suddenly turn around and head back up? Counting on the earnings reports due out tomorrow morning to be good? Stick to the technicals and do not deviate from that fact. Mentally I'm feeling like I'm forgetting lessons that I have already learned. I've already dug myself a hole to get out of and we haven't even completed two months of trading. I'll simply have to do better from here. The VIX was barely higher today and was stopped form crossing the 50 day moving average. Still oversold here on a short term basis. I'm guessing that as long as the VIX trends below the 50 day, stocks will be moving higher. The S&P has been in a sideways congestion for about a week while remaining overbought. We'll see how things go tomorrow. Europe and Asia were generally lower in last nights trade. We'll see how the gold shares earnings are in the morning and take it from there.