Well the employment number came and went. It was in line with expectations. The Dow ended up down 30 points on extremely light volume. Advance/declines were negative. Hopefully the volume will pick up next week. Gold got hammered, off over $5. The dollar rallied. The XAU was off a point and a half. NEM lost around 80 cents and ABX lost about 20 cents, both on light volume. The gold stocks held up better than I expected, considering the move in gold. I put in an order for some NEM September 45 calls, GTC. Perhaps it will get filled with some weakness on tuesday. My ABX calls are now at a loss. I am still believing that the gold stocks will rally before the expiration as they have for the past several months. The merchandise trade report will be out next week and that will be the key for gold in the near term I believe. There are 2 weeks to go in the options and that should be enough time for a rally and profitable positions. I could be wrong as I have been in the past. But my thinking is that this scenario will pan out. GE was down today, I'll have to check the charts on that one. I will short the OEX when it gets to the downtrend line at about 546. Ideally there will be a divergence in the McClellan oscillator when this occurs. It's a long Labor Day beginning. I'll check everything over the weekend and return to the trades on tuesday.