The market held in okay today. It opened strong this morning, which always makes me nervous, and sure enough it gave back all of the early gains with about 2 hrs left in the session. But late day push kept the major indexes in positive territory for the day. Volume was lighter than Friday, but breadth was nicely positive.

The chart below shows how the SPX continues to struggle with key resistance at the 850 level. This area was support going as far back as Oct. 10th, but has now been acting as resistance. The market is still oversold, so I expect that the SPX will break above this level soon.


The next chart is of gold. Gold has rallied sharply recently, and today closed near the 900 level. It is now above both its 50-day and 200-day averages. This has gotten a lot of gold bugs excited, which in this market likely means we will now see a pullback towards the recent breakout level.

The last chart shows the volatility index (VIX), which declined -3.3% today to 45.69. Notice how the spike higher last week above the 50-day average turned out to be a head-fake, and the index has now broken its recent uptrend line. Ideally, bulls would like to see the VIX continue to trend lower, and break below the 40 level on a continued up move in the stock market. Wishful thinking?

Trading comment: I took partial profits on my short bond etf (TBT), and held on to the rest of my positions. I like that the market was able to claw its way back into positive territory, despite some weak earnings reports as well as some big layoff announcements.

long TBT, SSO