We begin the new year with more of a thud than a bang as the Dow was up 25 points on light volume. The advance/declines were slightly negative. The summation index is beginning to move sideways. The overall market was much weaker than the Dow again with the NASDAQ losing around two hundred and fifty points. Not the start that most had figured including myself. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 have rolled over though they remain overbought. Not sure exactly what is next here for stocks but if the potential negative RSI divergence comes to fruition we're going lower. I cannot say for sure at the moment that will be the case as every time in the past two months when it looked like a decline was coming it turned out to be a sideways consolidation before moving higher. That may very well happen this time around too. We'll know more by the price action in the coming sessions. No SPY trades in mind for now. Gold was off $4 on the futures. The US dollar was up and interest rates were higher as well. The XAU dropped 2 1/8, while GDX fell 3/8. Volume was average. The short term indicators for GDX are approaching mid-range. There is an up trend line of support at 29.5 and another at 28. I should probably remain patient here for the GDX calls but one of the things that we look at trading GDX is near a buy signal. Another issue is also that if the overall market heads lower it will probably take the gold shares with it. Never any easy trades in this game. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today but finished off of the highest levels on the session. It did break through its upper Bollinger band during the day. There is plenty of room for the short term indicators to move higher but I'm not sure if that will be the case. There's still plenty of time in the January option cycle to make a trade. The employment report on Friday will most likely be the main mover for the week. We'll look over things again tonight and decide what to do from there. Europe and Asia were generally lower to start the year and begin the week. I'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.