An interesting day to be sure as the Dow fell 50 points on a bit better volume.  The advance/declines were about even.  The overall market was much stronger than the Dow.  The NASDAQ registered a gain on the day and that is bullish.  The market had a gap to the upside to start the session but an hour or so later news from the Ukraine sent the stock indices lower.  The rest of the day was spent recovering from that sell off.  The summation index is moving higher and the stock market has all the signs of wanting to move higher.  Volatility picked up today.  My September OEX puts are about at what I paid for them.  This trade has plenty of time to work but the market isn't acting bearish at the moment.  It is acting quite bullish and perhaps this idea is simply wrong.  GE fell 1/4 and volume picked up a little just like the overall market.  The September puts that I own here are break even.  The gold futures fell almost $10 today despite the trouble in the Ukraine.  Silver got walloped as well and that is not good news for the precious metals complex if you are long.  The US dollar was a bit weaker as well.  The XAU was off by 2/3.  ABX, GG and NEM all had fractional losses on light volume.  The October ABX calls that I have are slightly positive.  If gold can't rally on todays news, I don't know what it will take to get things going higher.  The positive seasonal factors haven't taken hold yet.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  A positive week for the major stock indexes but the volume was pretty light.  Perhaps the next two weeks will be more of the same with regards to volume.  The major players are still out for the summer.  Maybe I was too quick in taking the September options positions.  The market appears to want to go higher despite the loss for the Dow today.  I guess a lot depends on what happens in the Ukraine over the weekend.  The short term technicals have worked back up from the oversold condition but are not overbought yet.  I think that gold really needs silver to stop going down to get any kind of sustained rally going.  The silver chart looks ugly if you're bullish.  The CRB has also been heading almost straight down for almost a month and a half.  It appears obvious that despite all the money that has been thrown around, inflation is not a concern at the moment.  That isn't bullish for gold.  But as usual, anything can happen in this game.  I'll be checking out the charts and the headlines over the weekend.  For now it's Friday afternoon and time for a rest.