The Dow took off to the upside on the open and managed to hang on to a gain of 110 points on heavy volume.  We were up well over 200 points in the first half hour.  The advance/declines were almost 2 to 1 positive.  The summation index is still moving sideways in my opinion.  The overall market was stronger than the Dow.  I had the feeling things were about to get higher and that was right for a change.  My SPY March puts were stopped out for a bet less than a 25% loss.  Saw that coming too.  My inability to do the right thing at the right time was my downfall.  This trade had to be exited yesterday at the latest.  The market doesn't care and you have to move on.  I cannot continue to take losses though.  GE was off 1/8 and the volume was good.  Gold took a drop today, the futures shed over $20 and closed below $1300.  The US dollar was higher.  The XAU fell 1 3/4, while GDX lost 1/2.  Volume was heavy.  March is the seasonally weak period for gold and it appears that got started early this year.  GDX is almost at the up trend line that began last November and its 50 day moving average.  We are also now short term oversold but it feels like the gold shares have more room to run on the downside after todays price action.  However if you're bullish on gold, which I am, this would be the logical spot to try the calls again.  I'll ponder this idea over the weekend.  Mentally I'm feeling frustrated from the losing SPY March put trade.  I had a profit that turned into a loss and I knew that I should have bailed out of the trade.  I'm beginning to start to think that perhaps the SPY moves too fast for my meager brain as I'm getting older.  Or maybe I just can't do the right thing when it's needed.  Whatever it is I'll need to regroup and move on.  The market doesn't wait for anyone.  It looks like after the price action today that 2800 will no longer be a barrier and we will be moving higher despite the constant overbought condition of the market.  The converging Bollinger bands on the VIX now seem to be signaling that the big move will be to the upside and that the VIX will simply continue to head lower.  That's the message I'm getting today.  I'll recheck things over the weekend.  There's still two weeks left in the March option cycle.  I'm not sure if I'll try the SPY options again here but we'll see.  I'm leaning towards trying GDX again since I was successful there the last time.  But that really doesn't mean anything going forward.  Tough game but that's just the way it is.  Europe and Asia were both higher as money worldwide is flowing back into stocks.  It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.