Expiration friday. The market opened stronger, up around 80 points on the Dow at one point. Only up about 20 now with 20 minutes to go. Gold opened higher and closed up over $6. The XAU is up a couple points and NEM is up too. I sold the NEM calls earlier this morning for a profit of over 120%. Dumb luck. It was a terrible trade. If all the rest of my trades are like that one I won't survive. Should have been out on wednesday with a triple when the signal was there. Horrible trade. How can you make over 100% and call it a bad trade. Easy. Because it was. The mechanics were bullshit. It is better to do the trade properly and lose a little money than it is to screw it up like I just did. That was an extra 2 days of needless stress and work. I probably could have squeezed another 10% to 20% out of the thing today but couldn't do that either. It's the mental pain that is killing me. I know it's about making money but it is also about trading well. If you trade well the money will come. I will say the original premise of bouncing off the weekly XAU uptrendline was correct. I think that there will be more long gold trades to come in the weeks ahead. But they must be executed better than this one. More this weekend.