The bounce that we've been waiting for finally showed up as the Dow gained 344 points on lighter volume. The advance/declines were around 3 to 1 positive. This should turn the summation index sideways. The NASDAQ was the leader to the upside and that's a plus. The inflation data was high but the market shrugged it off. That's another positive. The S&P 500 is short term oversold. I'm expecting more upside in the near term. Option expiration is tomorrow with the Friday holiday. Gold was up five bucks on the futures. The US dollar was lower along with interest rates. The XAU gained 3 2/3, while GDX was up 7/8. Volume was average. The gold shares remain short term overbought and are now above the upper Bollinger band. There has been however no sustained selling here and that bodes well for the bulls. I'm looking to purchase the GDX May calls when we see some gold share weakness. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and the short term indicators are rolling over. It will be interesting to see what happens if we make it back down to the support line here that has been in effect since November. That could again set things up for the SPY puts. Or not. We have plenty of potential head and shoulders reversal patterns on the major stock indices. They would imply a trip back to new all time highs. I said before that I don't think these patterns will prove to be valid. Time will tell on that but I'm still a believer in lower stock prices for the medium term. We'll let the market show us the way. Europe and Asia were generally higher. We'll close out the shortened week tomorrow.