Frustratingly, the indicators remain largely unchanged over the past week. Our gold indicators – both for stocks and the metal – which had moved from solidly negative territory onto neutral ground and had shown signs of continuing into a buy zone – instead retreated and now are entrenched in neutral territory.

Our silver indicator also is neutral as are our dollar and bond indicators. Of the three, the one that has moved closest to a buy is bonds. That at least on the surface is a bit of a mystery given the very low unemployment rate. But with bonds trading above both 50- and 200-day moving averages, the message may be that inflation is likely to remain a no-show as growth, despite two consecutive quarters at 3 percent, slows to the 2 percent area or perhaps even lower depending on the fate of tax legislation.

The negative signals on stocks – the S&P 500 – and on oil – both the commodity and oil stocks – remain in place. While oil remains about where it was last week, the indicator on stocks has gotten worse. No indicator is perfect, but we think it’s too early to conclude that these signals are wrong.

In the case of stocks, our recent recommendation of a March-dated put option goes along with the recent worsening of the indicator. The November-dated put option represents half of a recommendation that was based on a forecast of increasing market volatility. Though time is short, we will remain with the November put as both stocks and VIX are negative. Still, if you prefer to roll the November option into the March option, it would be consistent with what we are recommending. If the indicator continues to worsen we will likely recommend put options on particular stocks.

And speaking of particular stocks, Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) was a terrible choice. But while it’s true that both oil and oil stocks have rallied, we can’t say that this is something more than noise in the indicators. That’s because of the political events that have been occurring, forming the background to the oil rally.

Specifically, the House of Saud is in turmoil, which we hope will lead to positive change but that also has the potential for upheaval. That could result in real chaos in the market. Oil the commodity would rally sharply but there would be a high probability that oil stocks would fall hard with the rest of the market.

For now we will hang on a bit longer with our CLR put but depending on political developments may look for another way of playing the sell signal in the indicators. So far the oil index we use as a benchmark has rallied about 7 percent from when the indicator turned negative. That’s an acceptable loss for most trading systems, but less so when it comes to calls and puts.