Well, so much for buying OEX calls. I didn't, fortunately and it reinforces why you really don't want to try things the day before expiration. Anything can happen. The Dow got clobbered today, losing 367 points and closing on the low of the day. Advance/declines were 5 to 1 negative and the volume was heavy. There was no good reason to try the puts there either since we were already oversold. An expiration related sell-off? Recession fears? Collapse of the dollar? Who knows? These things just don't happen in one day. The daily up trend lines in the indices have been broken. We'll see what happens when we get to the weeklies. I would not be surprised to see an up day on Monday but... Gold held up well again. It barely moved. The XAU lost 3 1/2 points. ABX and NEM were both off around 50 cents on OK volume. Considering the overall market action, the gold shares held up rather well. I'm now thinking that you have just got to own some calls here before the earnings come out. However we are so overbought that it is dangerous. However it seems that money is just flocking to gold and you can't fight that. GE didn't do too bad today, off 75 cents on good volume. It is near one of the weekly trend lines at around 39.75. If that doesn't hold then it's down to 37 and that would be the ideal time to get some calls. That's what I'm waiting for at this point unless price movement dictates otherwise. Mentally I feel fine, got a good nights sleep. The battle here is with oneself, as always. Self control and discipline cannot be over emphasized. The market is a tough game in itself, you don't need to make it any tougher. What went on today, I don't know. I don't think that it will be a repeat of August but I don't know. Perhaps there is something going on again that the market knows but we do not. Next week should be interesting. I think we'll bounce early in the week but that's just a guess. For now it's the weekend and time for a break...