The Dow took a breather today as the most watched index shed 33 points on average volume.  The advance/declines were almost 2 to 1 negative.  A mixed session to be sure as the S&P 500 rose a couple of points while the NASDAQ hit a new all time high.  The summation index continues higher.  The small stocks are leading the way and that's bullish.  We are short term overbought and a pause is due.  But the trend is up and we are likely going to see higher prices now over the rest of the summer.  GE tacked on another 20 cents as the earnings were a bit better than expected.  It looks like holding on another day to the GE call trade would have worked out.  It is always easy to look back and say you should have done something else but it is a waste of time in this game.  You just have to keep moving forward.  Gold continues to fall as it broke the $1150 level this week.  The futures lost $11 as the US dollar was higher once again.  The gold shares got smacked as the XAU fell 2 2/3, while GDX lost 3/4.  ABX dropped almost 1/2 on very heavy volume.  It looks like a downside washout here for the gold shares.  My ABX October calls are already cut in half.  I probably did the wrong thing today and purchased some more of these calls at a lower strike price.  This is probably the case of throwing good money after bad on the heels of the trying to catch the falling knife in stock market jargon.  Normally I would not even think of doing this but the indicators are off the charts oversold.  Will there not be some kind of bounce between now and October?  I think that the answer is yes.  Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired.  All systems appear to be a go for higher stock prices moving forward.  The technicals on a medium term basis have turned back up for the major stock indices.  This past week was a strong one for higher prices adding to the usual positive expiration week positive bias.  The August option cycle has an extra week in it so there is no hurry for any positions there.  Purchasing the SPY calls at the end of last week/beginning of this week was the proper move.  Obviously one that I didn't make.  Focusing on the gold share calls was a bad idea, considering some of those indexes had already fallen out of the support area.  Combine that with the breakdown in silver and you can consider these signs that I did not pay attention to.  It could prove costly.  Selling GE ahead of the earnings might have been a response to already losing money in the first ABX October call trade.  Everything that you do in the game has a way of influencing results for the positive or the negative.  I still may have bailed out of the GE call trade regardless.  The issue I'm faced with now is concentrating on the ABX trades, which may get in the way of other ideas.  It isn't an easy game of trading and that takes care of weeding out some of the players.  I'll have a lot to consider over the weekend.  For now it's Friday afternoon and time for a rest.