It was a mixed bag today on Wall street as the Dow gained 10 points on good volume.  The Dow was up well over 500 during the session.  The advance/declines were around 2 to 1 negative.  The summation index is still heading lower.  It was a one day reversal to the downside for both the NASDAQ and the S&P 500.  The same can be said for the other major averages as well.  Perhaps the market was simply getting a little ahead of itself here as there were no major news events.  I did place an order for the SPY July puts early in the morning and it was eventually filled.  The entry timing was pretty good for a change.  This trade is already showing a nice profit.  With only four days to go in the July option cycle, I should probably get rid of it if we see some follow through selling tomorrow.  However the contraction of the Bollinger bands does imply that a big move is coming and now perhaps it will be to the downside.  The trading is never easy.  GE was flat on the session and the volume remains on the light side.  Gold gained three bucks on the August futures but was higher during the day.  The US dollar was slightly lower.  The XAU fell 4 2/3, while GDX lost 1 1/4.  Volume remains muted here.  I certainly would like to try the GDX calls again but will probably go out to the August option cycle which has an extra week in it.  I do not expect a big drop here for gold but if the market starts to tank it will probably take the gold shares with it.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  the VIX spiked about 5 points today on the intra-day reversal in the stock market.  The short term technical indicators have turned up here and are not close to being overbought.  The indicators for the VIX move quickly and only seem to slow down when the market rallies.  The upper Bollinger band here is four points away and another day like today will get us there.  The S&P today did break above the down trend line that began in February but the volume was light.  It turned out to be a false breakout as prices then turned around and closed back below the line.  Of course a very positive day tomorrow could reverse things back again.  It is a very interesting game.  There were plenty of downside reversals in key stocks today.  We'll find out in the coming days if they were real or not.  The volume today increased to the downside and that is not a positive.  I'll go over things tonight and try to come up with a game plan for tomorrow.  Europe and Asia were higher overnight.  We'll see if they follow the US lower tomorrow.