The Dow was up about 70 points in post holiday trading. Volume was average and the advance/declines were positive almost at a 2 to 1 ratio. Not much news but we were oversold. Gold continued down another $4. The XAU lost over 2 points and ABX along with NEM got slammed. I sold my NEM calls for a loss. Fridays action was negated and the head and shoulders patterns that looked so good and had all the volume characteristics, failed. Uptrend lines were also broken and the stochastics rolled over. I just had to bail out there isn't much else to do. I could not wait around and hope. It was a 65% loss and that's never good. I also think it was the 2nd biggest money loss of the year. Ouch. Not a good way to start off the second half of the year. But it happens. That is the nature of the game. You gotta move on and not let it affect the next trade. Easier said than done. It looked like such a good set-up too. But I really couldn't let the loss get any bigger. It was already over the 50% threshold. Where to go from here? I don't know. Nothing in the pipeline at this point. I'll check things tonight and we'll see. Mentally I'm doing OK I suppose. Sometimes you've just gotta see things as they are, not as you want them to be. It may be painful for a while but in the long run you must be honest with yourself.