The expected upside today did not materialize as the Dow fell 25 points on good volume.  The advance/declines were negative.  We were down over 100 during the session but made made a mid day comeback.  Perhaps we'll see some upside tomorrow.  The economic data was both positive and negative depending on the stat.  The summation index is trending lower now.  However the daily candlestick charts for the stock indices appear to have put in a hammer.  That may provide some short term support.  Not completely oversold technically yet on a daily basis.  GE had a pretty good reversal on the day and finished positive by a few cents.  We are short term oversold here and today may have been the place to get the January calls.  Time will tell on that.  Gold had a good session, up a bit over $25 on the futures.  Short covering in my opinion since the volume wasn't all that much.  The US dollar didn't do much today either.  The XAU rose 2 1/8.  ABX up 1/8, while both GG and NEM gained 1/2 or so.  Volume was better than average for the gold shares.  My open order for the GG January calls wasn't filled and the premiums have moved up.  The open interest for the particular contract that I'm looking at went up ten fold overnight after yesterdays action.  Obviously somebody is interested in this trade.  If I get a chance in the next few days to buy the options at a reasonable price I'll do it.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  We are still overdue for some type of decline or pause for the stock indexes.  I'm not sure if the past few days are just going to be it.  We should see some movement with Fridays jobs numbers.  At this point I'm guessing that they will be viewed as a positive.  We'll know in short order.  Gold has a nice move higher but it can only be viewed as a bounce unless we get some follow through upside.  We might be putting in a double bottom on the weekly charts but it is too early to know for sure.  The potential is there but the fundamentals for gold right now are still negative.  We'll keep an eye on the overseas action tonight and go from there.