The expected upside showed up today as the Dow gained 136 points on good volume.  The advance/declines were 3 to 1 positive.  Perhaps the market knows something about tomorrows employment report.  Or not.  Technically we needed a bounce and we got it.  We'll have to wait and see if it is the start of something more.  GE gained 1/4 on average volume.  Perhaps we are trying to put in a base here as well.  No trades there for now.  Gold lost a few bucks as the dollar didn't do much again today.  The XAU fell 1 1/8.  ABX was the story of the day as it got clobbered on a poor earnings report.  ABX down 3 7/8, GG up 1/8 and NEM fell 1 1/3.  Volume was extremely heavy on ABX, about average for the others.  My ABX November calls were a complete 100% loss.  ABX gapped down at the open and blew past my stop loss order.  I never seem to do well with the short term trades and this was no exception.  I wasn't expecting anything like this but the market as usual will go where it wants.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  We will have to see if we get any follow through to todays rally in the overall market tomorrow.  If so, we could be at the beginning of some type of rally here.  If not, it will be more of the same sideways activity pre-election.  So we'll see.  Gold seems to be in the same stand by mode.  I'm not sure if I'll try the gold share calls again.  I'll have to try and regroup from todays debacle.  I might go with the GDX for the next gold trade as the single stock risk would be less.  Trading a basket of the gold shares vs. a single company in theory has less risk.  We'll see.  Perhaps I simply expected ABX to have the same upside movement that GG had on its earnings release.  We'll get the employment number tomorrow and go from there.