It was an up and down kind of day as the Dow gained only 4 points. The advance/declines were positive. You could make a case for going either way here. With only 2 days to go in the August option cycle, I think the prudent course of action here would be inaction. There is no clear near term signal and the reward would not outweigh the risk. The summation index is still heading to the upside at the moment. I'm also seeing warnings in the media about more selling to come so you can expect the opposite. GE was flat on average volume. GE has basically the same chart pattern as the overall market. No trades there for now. Gold gained $8 on the futures and the XAU tacked on 2 1/4. We did fall back from the highs in the XAU. The US dollar was lower today. ABX, GG and NEM all had fractional gains on very light volume. Overbought here now. Nobody is selling right now but they're not really buying either. My ABX calls are still in the black but we really need to see some upwards movement in the underlying stock soon. Time decay will start to set in and any downward action will drop the premiums. I'll ponder things tonight. We are almost at new all time highs in gold itself. Mentally I'm feeling tired today, did not sleep enough or well. Just a couple of days left to trade this week and it seems relatively quiet when you consider what the markets went through last week. Another thing to consider with the ABX call trade is that the volatility premium will start to diminish as well with a quieter market. We are in the middle of August and if things get back to normal now, the market will slow down. So perhaps I won't hold the ABX trade as long as previously planned.