Onca again the data came in stronger than expected and we had an early morning sell off. Then just like yesterday the market spent the rest of the session making it back up. The Dow rose 38 points on light volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is still trending lower. The overall market was gain stronger than the Dow with the NASDAQ leading the way. As long as the small stcoks are in the lead I think that we are in store for higher prices. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 are moving sideways but trying to turn back up. We'll get some more inflation data tomorrow and that should get us going one way or the other once again. Only 2 days left in the February option cycle and ahead of a holiday weekend coming up. Gold lost $18 on the futures and closed below support at $1850. The US dollar was higher and interest rates were up slightly. The XAU fell 3 1/2, while GDX lost 7/8. Volume was average. The gold shares gapped down at the open and wiped out my GDX February calls. It was a 99% loss as this trade never got going the way we expected. GDX remains short term oversold and never got out of that condition as we thouhgt it would. Not a lot of money involved in this trade but starting the year with a loss is always disappointing. But you've got to move on. We will keep an eye on the gold shares but not expecting another trade there soon. Oversold and staying there is not positive. Mentally I'm feeling a bit down with a losing trade on the books. The short term trades can be big winners or big losers and we were on the losing side this time around. The VIX continued lower and that fits an up market. The short term indicators are heading lower and have more room to go down. I'm expecting higher stock prices into the close on Friday but we'll have to see the reaction to tomorrows inflation numbers. Asia was down and Europe up overnight. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.