The Dow rose 104 points today on what looks like light volume. Advance/declines were over 2 to 1 positive. I am thinking of getting some puts on Monday. But I don't know for sure. Will check things over the weekend. I lost money on the XAU trade today. Gold opened up down over $10. I bailed out for a substantial loss. It didn't make sense at the time to hold on any longer. The loss was around 75%. Since the ABX calls have 6 weeks to go, I held on to them as opposed to taking a huge hit there as well. Gold came back to be down about $5 on the day. However the XAU came all the way back to be up over 2 points. The options I sold for a big loss made it back to breakeven. What can you do? Nothing, it's over and done with. Should I have held on? In retrospect, of course I should have. But you can never predict what's going to happen. I did what I thought was best at the time. I was wrong. The ABX calls came back a bit but nothing great and I'm still losing money there and I own way too many of them. I took more of a chance there and will hold them for a while at this point. I need to see a good week for gold next week to feel positive about this trade. I'm still thinking that it was the right thing to do but I really have too much money in that trade. The markets are tough. Mentally I'm going to try and make some money next week. I think that I have a viable play on the OEX puts if the timing is right. It probably won't be a lot of money and it shouldn't be with so little time left. I'm a bit tired from getting up early today. I'm a bit frustrated with the lousy XAU trade but it isn't as bad as I thought and I'm trying not to beat myself up over it. I will perhaps take a break after next week to clear my head out. But this weekend I will be working hard to figure out the next move. Sometimes you've just got to keep on going because really, it's all you can do...