A day of hanging around as the Dow fell 39 points on lighter volume.  The advance/declines were negative.  The summation index continues its sideways track.  The overall market was slightly better than the Dow.  Jobless claims came in a little worse than expected but the other economic data was better than anticipated.  No other headlines to speak of.  Expiration week has remained pretty tame so far.  That could be a preview of coming attractions.  Summer arrives on Saturday.  The short term technical picture for the S&P remains the same.  GE was up three cents and the volume was light.  Gold was slightly lower and the US dollar was up a bit.  The XAU fell 1 7/8, while GDX shed about 1/2.  Volume remains very light here as there is no interest in the gold shares.  I sold my GDX June calls for a 95% loss.  They were dead a couple days ago but I was hoping for a miracle.  This trade was doomed from the start and never should have even been put on.  That's two crappy trades in a row now for me and I'm off to the sidelines.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  The VIX closed below its 50 day moving average but still has the looks to go either way in my opinion.  Of course my views on what's going on here haven't been correct in a while.  I am going to have to step back and regroup.  I'll be waiting for some kind of decent technical signal before putting on the next trade in either the SPY or GDX.  The Bollinger bands continue to contract in the GDX daily chart so something is going to happen there in the near future.  The S&P had a sharp drop followed by a bounce.  It's now simply stalling at the moment before the next move.  With mid-range techncials it could go either way.  I'm also thinking that things will get a little boring with summer on the horizon.  The doldrums could go into effect at any time.  For me, I'll need to rebuild some confidence before taking on the next trade.  A couple of dumb moves will do that to you.  As always though you've got to keep moving on.  The market doesn't care.  Europe and Asia were lower overnight.  We'll see how the option expiration goes tomorrow.