Back and forth was the general description today as the Dow gained 63 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were slightly negative. The summation index is still moving up. The overall market was weaker than the Dow today with the NASDAQ leading the way lower. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought. A short trading week but I'm still looking for higher prices by the close on Friday. We'll get retail sales and the Fed minutes tomorrow. They are potential market movers. GE was up 1/4 but the volume was light. Gold dropped below the key level of $1800 today on the April futures as it fell almost $25. The US dollar finished little changed again. The XAU lost 1 3/4, while GDX shed 2/3. Volume was on the light side. I sold my GDX February calls for an 80% loss. I doubt that they'll get back to the strike price I had by Friday. This was a trade that moved sideways for the most part until the past couple of days when it fell apart. However I still would like to try and capitalize on the potential positive movement of the big earnings reports due out on Thursday. Near the close I purchased some other GDX February calls at a closer to the money strike price. There's only three days to go for this trade and gold is dropping so it could be another blow up trade. However I did not place a lot of money in this idea due to the inherent risk of trading with such little time left. So we'll see what happens. I'm holding on until the market open on Thursday to be sure. This trade does not make a lot of technical sense because the short term indicators are moving lower and are not completely oversold yet. It is definately out of my comfort zone. Mentally I'm feeling OK despite the loss. It's part of the game. The VIX was higher and is now back above the 20 level. It fits with the overall market being lower but not with the Dow higher. Still oversold here as well. On another note interest rates have started to rise and that will not be good for gold or the stock market at some point. That may already be reflected in the recent weakness for the precious metal. It's something to keep an eye on. Asia was up and Europe mixed overnight. We'll see how things go tomorrow.