The Dow rose 59 points on lighter volume. Advance/declines were positive. The inflation data was viewed as benign although it was up a percentage point. The market barely sold off in the first hour. My OEX puts got stopped out eventually for a 50% loss. So I was wrong again. I might try again before the consumer prices on Tuesday but I'll have to look at things over the weekend. It will be option expiration week and the positive bias will be in effect. Tough to go against that but we'll see. Gold soared $10 and the XAU finally had a good day up 3 and a half. The volume was good there as well. NEM was up over a dollar for its biggest gain in quite a while. ABX had heavy volume as well but only rose 40 cents. Those calls that I sold yesterday didn't do much. The dollar hit new lows against the foreign currencies. But still, the gold stocks really haven't followed the price of gold in this move. And that killed the ABX trade for me. Sometimes you can be right on the fundamentals but the prices don't correlate. It happens. However it doesn't happen a lot or else it wouldn't be worth keeping an eye on things. As for the trading this week, it was horrible. My worst week in quite a while. I'll regroup over the weekend and perhaps try again next week. I don't want to do anything stupid again so perhaps I'll sit it out but you never know. Mentally I'm tired and didn't sleep that well this week. That did not contribute to the losses in my opinion. It's a difficult game and times like these leave you discouraged. But you have to move on and remember losses are part of the game. They are going to happen. You just have to give it your best and keep on going...