A day of hanging around for a change as the Dow lost 76 points on average volume.  the advance/declines were almost 2 to 1 positive though.  The summation index is still moving lower but is trying to make a stand here and turn around.  The overall market was a bit stronger than the Dow.  My SPY January calls are back to losers.  The VIX was lower today despite the drop and that takes some volatility premium out of the options.  In hindsight I probably should have just dumped this trade today to simply break even.  However I still am of the belief that we'll see a pop on the open January 2nd and that will be the time to exit this ill timed trade.  I could be wrong.  GE was up 1/4 and the volume remains heavy.  Gold was up a bit and the US dollar was down a bit.  The XAU dropped 1 1/8, while GDX shed 1/3.  Volume was average.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  Quite a volatile holiday trading week but the Dow did come back from the brink.  That low will probably have to be tested at some point.  My hope here is that this short term rally continues at the beginning of next year, which will be Wednesday.  Another short trading week is coming up.  We did just see some extremely oversold readings for the major averages which don't happen very often.  Backing and filling can be expected for a while.  I'm just hoping the filling keeps coming here in the short term.  One thing that is probably for sure though.  We won't just be going straight back up.  We're just getting started on the bear market that has been overdue.  We'll just have to see how long it's going to last.  The short term technical indicators for the S&P are a little below mid-range.  They could roll back over in the near term of they could continue higher.  I'm hoping on the latter.  Traders will come in to finish out the year on Monday, take a day off and then we'll see how the new year starts.  Could go either way.  Europe and Asia were generally higher overnight.  It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.