The market was trending slightly higher for much of the day and then took off to the upside in the final hour and a half. The Dow gained 528 points on light volume. The advance/declines were just about 2 to 1 positive. The summation index is starting to congest. A big move before tomorrows consumer prices is a surprise but the market always knows more than we do. Short covering in there to be sure but some positive price movement was to be expected. Will it carry us past the long term down trend line in the S&P 500? The short term indicators there have begun to turn up. Is the positive expiration week bias in effect? Plenty of questions as usual in this game. The Dow led the way higher today. It's too late to try the SPY December calls for me. I did put in an overnight order for some but it wasn't filled and the premiums were very high with only a week to go anyway. After tomorrows data we've got the Fed on Wednesday. So the jury is still out on where we go this week but it is a promising start for the bulls. Gold was off almost $20 on the futures. The US dollar was higher along with interest rates. The XAU and GDX had slight fractional moves one way or the other on average volume. The gold shares did come off of their lows for the session, following the overall market higher. Once again the gold shares outperformed the metal itself and that's a plus for the bulls. The short term indicators for the gold shares are still in overbought territory. We will wait for the Fed to get out of the way before attempting to purchase the GDX January calls. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX jumped today and that makes absolutely no sense with a market up over 500 points. Short term overbought now for the VIX which would imply that it will turn around and we'll see a rally in the market. If that does occur we will probably see quite a move up for stocks. That would take out the down trend line for the S&P and we could declare with some confidence that the bear market is over. If the VIX stays overbought we should see a decline. So it will be an interesting week to say the least. Asia and Europe were down to begin the trading week. We'll see how the market reacts to the inflation data tomorrow.