We got some buying into the close before a long weekend and the Dow rose 28 points on lighter than lately volume. The advance/declines were slightly positive. The summation index continues to move up. The overall market was stronger than the Dow with the NASDAQ leading the way again. New all time closing highs once again for some of the major indexes. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought. It appears that the recent sideways price action has digested the prior gains and now we'll move higher. That's my take on things for now. The positive expiration week bias should come into effect as well next week. GE was up 1/4 but the volume remains light. Gold dropped around five bucks on the futures. The US dollar finished little changed yet again. The XAU and GDX had fractional moves one way or the other on light volume. My GDX February calls are now solidly in the red as time is running out. Only four days left in the February option cycle. At this point I'm probably going to have to wait for the earnings reports due out on the 18th. Even that may not save this trade if the gold shares continue to drift lower. The short term technical indicators for GDX are mid-range so it could go either way. But this is a trade that I should probably already be out of. It never really made any headway to the upside on the option premiums from the start. Slight gains at the best in the beginning. Well at least I didn't try the SPY February puts. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and actually closed below 20. This could set off a rally from here in stocks despite already being short term oversold. On the flip side, things for the VIX could abruptly turn around at this level and imply a decline in stocks. I'm going with the former. Once we get and stay below the 20 level on the VIX it usually has bullish implications for the overall market. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how things go on Tuesday. A long holiday weekend here with plenty of time to go over all of the charts. I'm looking for higher prices next week. Asia was lower with many markets closed for the new year holiday there. Europe was higher. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.