It turned out to be a mixed bag on inflation day as the Dow fell 156 points on light volume. The advance/declines were slightly negative. The summation index is still moving down. Consumer prices came in a bit hotter than expected. The market sold off, came back with a rally and then sold off again only to rally the rest of the session until the final five minutes. It was really a back and forth type of day. Considering the data and potential for a sell off, the market held up pretty good today. The NASDAQ posted a gain and that is a surprise given the backdrop. The breadth wasn't as bad as it could have been either. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 are still trying to make their mind up on which way to go. We'll get retail sales data tomorrow and we'll have to see what the market does with that. Things could still go either way here. Gold somehow was up a couple bucks on the futures after bouncing back and forth. The US dollar finished slightly lower and interest rates were up. The XAU and GDX had slight fractional gains on light volume. My GDX February calls are now losers with only 3 days to go in this months option cycle. GDX remains short term oversold and staying that way, which isn't helping my cause. We would need to see some type of rally from here for this trade to get back to break even. Not sure that is going to happen as interest in gold has waned. Will have to think about just taking the loss tomorrow. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and closed below the 20 level. The short term indicators here have turned back down. We got the drop in the VIX we were looking for but not the rise in stock prices to go along. Not sure what that means going forward. Running out of time in Februarys option cycle and decisions must be made. I suppose we'll see how things open tomorrow and go from there. Europe and Asia were generally higher in last nights trading. We'll keep an eye on the overnight headlines.