We begin the month of December on a down note as the Dow fell 51 points on heavy volume.  The advance/declines were 3 to 1 negative.  This should turn the summation index down.  We have been short term overbought on the stock indices for quite some time so a pause isn't completely out of the question.  The short term technical indicators have now rolled over for the major stock indices.  The overall market was much weaker than the Dow, especially the small stocks.  I don't expect any huge decline here though.  But what do I know?  Not a whole lot sometimes.  GE was off almost 1/2 and the volume was heavy.  Not sure what is going on here either.  However I did place an order for the GE March calls since I have been waiting for a pullback to try this trade.  I'm leaving the order open.  Gold had a wild session as the Swiss voted down the peg to gold for the franc.  Gold initially sold off hard overnight but then completely turned around and rallied just a hard back to the upside.  The futures ended the day higher by over $40 and back above the $1200 level.  The US dollar was weaker on the session.  The XAU was up 4 3/4.  ABX up 1/2, GG rose 1 2/3 and NEM added 1 1/4.  Volume was heavy back to the upside.  Unfortunately for me ABX was the laggard here but my ABX January calls are still in the black.  I really don't know what to make of todays price action but it appears to be bullish.  However I would not be surprised to see some sideways action as the market figures out where it wants to go.  The USO trade that I wrote about last week is still in the picture but USO had a strong day today to halt the free fall in oil.  I still like the USO February calls if we drop back again.  On a weekly basis, USO is so many standard deviations away from its 50 week moving average that it has to begin to snap back towards it between now and February.  After todays price action I feel this will happen sooner rather than later.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  My guess is that any decline that we see here will set us up for a nice rally at the beginning of next year.  January through March calls should work out in my opinion.  I'll be looking at the OEX and SPY to trade long at some point this month.  The ideal scenario will be for the summation index to trend lower with the short term technical indicators reaching oversold status.  That will be the opportune time to buy the calls.  Wishful thinking perhaps on my part.  The markets go where they want.  Gold had a crazy session with incredible volatility.  I don't know what it means for the future but at least for the bullish cause we are back above $1200.  We'll have to see how the rest of the week plays out.  The employment report on Friday should be the main driver.  We also have the Feds beige book out on Wednesday.  So it should be an interesting week.  We'll keep an eye on the overnight action and get ready for Tuesday.