Kind of a mixed bag today as the Dow fell 38 points on very light volume.  The advance/declines were negative.  We sold off hard early and came back for most of the day.  It is expiration week so the positive bias should assert itself at some point.  Plenty of economic data out this week as well.  Volume has been pretty tepid in August so I would not get too wrapped up in whatever transpires this week.  GE was off 1/8 on the same pretty light volume.  We're getting no forward signals from this issue lately.  Chalk it up to the summer doldrums I guess.  Gold fell $10 on the futures today despite weakness in the US dollar.  The XAU dropped 2 1/3.  ABX, GG and NEM all had fractional losses on light volume.  My October ABX calls are still in the red.  The gold shares are short term overbought here so some type of pullback or weakness is to be expected.  Gold itself needs a breakout above $1625 to get things going to the upside.  Mentally I'm feeling better but not 100% yet.  It feels like we are simply marking time here with the stock indexes.  Very light volume with a slight upwards bias is the story for now.  Gold remains in the same trading range since early May.  There is nothing to do but wait for a breakout one way or the other.  It is not a bad time to be on the sidelines.  Haven't had a headline out of Europe in a while.  We'll see how long that can continue.