The Dow lost 23 points today on average volume. Advance/declines were positive. Moving basically sideways for the past 3 days. End of the month and some economic data tomorrow. I would like to try the OEX puts again but there is no decent signal yet. However the daily pattern is similar to what the market did before the August decline. In August it felt like we were going to move to the upside out of the sideways pattern but we dropped. So we'll see. Gold was up a couple bucks as the dollar was a bit weaker. The XAU dropped 1/3. ABX up 1/4, GG was flat and NEM fell 1/3. Volume was light. I'm leaving in the open order for the ABX October calls. This may not be the right move but I'll leave it in for another day. Gold itself is still very overbought. Conditions like this cannot last forever. So we'll see what happens. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired today. Did not sleep enough. We'll wrap up September tomorrow and go from there. Seasonally, this is usually one of the weakest periods for the stock indices. It hasn't been that way this year. Perhaps the market is simply much stronger than I realize at this juncture.