The market gapped higher at the open and never looked back as the Dow gained 289 points on light volume.  The advance/declines were positive.  The summation index is moving higher.  The overall market was stronger than the Dow.  It appears that my idea that this would not be the quickest bear market on record is about to go down in flames.  We are just about there on the S&P 500.  The light volume hasn't been a problem yet for the market.  I sold out all my positions for the SPY August puts.  Once again I wasn't able to manage the trade correctly and took losses.  The lower strike price had a 55% loss, with the higher strike price losing 20%.  Yesterdays gains vanished at the open.  That's three losing trades in a row in the past week and my confidence is now lacking.  At this rate it looks like we'll grind it higher into the option expiration next week.  GE was flat on the session and the volume was average.  Gold had a bounce today after yesterdays shellacking.  It was only up a few bucks but came way up from its intra-day lows.  The US dollar finished little changed.  It probably needs time to build some kind of base before going higher again.  That's my best guess at the moment.  The XAU and GDX had slight fractional gains on average volume.  Mentally I'm feeling disappointed that I did not take the gains that I had yesterday on the SPY puts.  While I thought that it could be the beginning of at least some type of more than one day decline, it wasn't.  The continuing higher NASDAQ combined with the rising summation index should have let me know that the short term overbought condition that I was watching wasn't about to simply end.  The touching of the lower Bollinger band in the VIX isn't working as a longer sell signal anymore.  The short term technical indicators there have already rolled back over to the downside.  Now I suppose the question is where do we go from here?  There's still seven days left in the August option cycle.  The Bollinger bands on the VIX continue to contract so there is something brewing in the near future.  Maybe it's a burst to the upside like today.  Or perhaps I should have just held on to the puts with today being the final push for the bulls.  When in doubt, stay out.  I suppose that it's back to the sidelines for me.  Europe and Asia were both up in last nights trade.  We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.