The Dow held up pretty well today and finished the day with a gain of 37 points on good volume. The advance/declines were positive. Perhaps we'll see a bounce in the beginning of next week. I get the feeling anything to the upside will be a short lived reprieve. I think we'll still see lower prices in the weeks ahead. Looking out a couple of weeks, I'd probably like to own some OEX puts before Octobers employment report. GE was up about an 1/8 on average volume. We're at the bottom of the trading range here and I do believe that we will break down. I'm still looking to buy the January calls here at some point. Gold had another debacle of a day, down just over 100 on the futures, with a slight bounce back in the aftermarket. The US dollar was down a touch but that didn't matter. Gold is now in a free fall as usually happens when something goes parabolic. The XAU fell 8 1/4. ABX down 2 1/3, GG lost 2 1/8 and NEM shed another 2 1/3. Volume was heavy. The gold shares did bounce a bit during the day. I would still like to get some gold share calls for October or more likely November. However we are just gapping down every day right now. Gold itself is around 1650 and support in my opinion come in at 1600. I may purchase some calls if and when we get to that point. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired, did not sleep well. It was a negative week for all of the markets it seems as the realization is now that a worldwide slowdown in economic activity is at hand. We're oversold on a lot of the indices but could stay that way for a while. It's a tough trading envirornment. I still think that if we get a bounce, it can be shorted. I could be wrong. Plenty of data out next week and we've got the end of the month as well. I'll check the charts over the weekend