Moving higher to begin the week as the Dow rose 254 points on light volume. The advance/declines were shy of 3 to 1 positive. The summation index is moving up. Once again the NASDAQ led the way and that is bullish. The S&P 500 is breaking through the long term down trend line today. We'll have to see if it holds up for the rest of the week and I believe that it will. Getting short term overbought on the daily technical indicators there but there is room for them to go higher. The only caveat is the volume not being robust but we'll see what goes on as the week unfolds. We continue to put our faith in higher stock prices moving forward. Gold was up a few bucks on the futures. The US dollar finished little changed and interest rates rose again. The XAU and GDX were barely negative on average volume. We'll continue to wait for GDX to get short term oversold for now. However the money coming into the gold shares has been substantial and you cannot ignore that. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and remains below the 20 level. The short term indicators here are trending sideways just below mid-range. The daily candlestick chart view still looks like it wants to go lower which would support higher prices near term for stocks. We'll get the first look at 4th quarter GDP this week and some inflation data due out on Friday. So potential market moving events are out there. Plus earnings will be pouring in as well. Option premiums are high since we just moved into the February option cycle. Still on the sidelines for now. Most of Asia was closed for the lunar new year but Japan was open and higher. Europe was up as well. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.