Stocks continued to the upside to begin the week as the Dow gained 94 points on average volume. The advance/declines were about even. The summation index is moving up. The NASDAQ led the way higher and that's a plus for the bulls. During the session I purchased some of the SPY April puts. The S&P 500 was at the last Fibanocci retracement level and I wanted to give this idea a shot. The S&P blew through the resistance. It does remain short term overbought. At this point the market seems to be saying that we are going even higher from the recent lows. At the close I decided to simply sell those SPY puts for a small loss and roll into the puts at a closer to the money strike price so that's what I did. The loss on the first position was 15%. The current SPY April put position that I bought at the close is showing a small loss. I still believe that with the market going up in a straight line for two weeks it is due for a pullback or pause. I could be wrong. Gold shed $30 on the futures today to begin the week. The US dollar was higher and interest rates were slightly lower. The XAU lost 4 2/3, while GDX was off a point. Volume was light. I'm still considering the GDX April calls ahead of Thursdays inflation data but I really like to take things one trade at a time. The short term technical indicators for GDX are still mid-range and the up trend line comes in at 36. If we get to 36 in the next couple of days I will probably give this idea a try. Mentally I'm feeling tired, not enough sleep. The VIX dropped both below the important 20 level and below its 200 day moving average. This is another reason why I wanted to trade the SPY puts. Volatility should pick up. The VIX is also very oversold on a daily basis and has been oversold for 2 weeks. This will not continue indefinately. I'm not saying that another leg down for stocks is about to happen but I do expect some near term weakness at least. We'll see. Europe was generally higher and Asia mixed to begin the week. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.