A mixed bag today as the Dow rose 125 points on light volume. The advance/declines were better than 3 to 1 positive. The summation index is back to moving up. The overall market was weaker than the Dow. It was a one day reversal to the downside for the S&P 500. I did place an order for the SPY Feruary puts overnight but it wasn't filled. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought but today may have been the chance to try the puts. If we are higher tomorrow I may try this idea again but it could be too late. Inflation data out in the morning and that should be a market mover. I'm looking at the hourly chart on the S&P and if we get a high above todays high with a lower RSI reading I'll give the puts a try. But this would be strickly short term in nature as it's option expiration week. Gold was off $4 on the futures. The US dollar finished flat along with interest rates. The XAU was up 1 1/4, while GDX rose 1/3. Volume was below average. Gold shares up with gold down is a plus for the bulls as we haven't seen that for a while. Perhaps it is the beginning of a rally in GDX that I was looking for as it remains short term oversold. Barrick Gold reports earnings tomorrow and we've seen about all of the bad news from that stock lately. Mentally I'm feeling a bit concerned that I might have missed the SPY put trade. The VIX was up today. It rose a point even though we hardly had a market drop overall. The short term indicators have turned up. It could represent more near term weakness for stocks but we'll have to wait and see. Europe finished higher and most of Asia was closed for holiday. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.