An up and down session as the Dow managed a gain of 28 points on light volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index continues higher. The inflation data came in where expected. We went up down up and back down again. The NASDAQ continues to outperform and that's bullish. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought and is finding some resistance at the December highs. We've broken the long term down trend line here but the volume was not that strong. We also had our first close above the 50 week moving average in about a year. We'll know a lot more after next weeks Fed announcement and speech. The only concern here is the lack of volume on the rise. Gold was up a couple bucks on the futures. The US dollar was slightly higher along with interest rates. The XAU was off 2 1/8, while GDX lost almost 1/2. Volume was light. The short term indicators for GDX have now rolled over and the gold shares under performed the metal itself. That's a negative for the bulls here. We'll continue to wait for GDX to get oversold before trying the calls again there. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower yet again and the short term indicators remain oversold but not to an extreme. The VIX can stay oversold for quite some time during market rallies. Next week looms large with both the Fed and the employment report. We are going to have to carefully go over the charts this weekend before making the next trading decision. The markets reaction to the news and data will be the most important thing as usual. Still plenty of time in the February option cycle to make something happen. We're overall in the bullish camp but the SPY touched its top Bollinger band today and came back. The volume on the recent short term rise there has steadily gotten lower as price has gotten higher. So there will be plenty to ponder in the next two days. Europe and Asia were higher to close the week with the exception of India. It's Friday afternoon and time for a rest.