Marking time is what we're doing here as the Dow rose 43 points on light volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index continues up. The market is just hanging around until next weeks data and Fed meeting happen. The technical conditions for the major averages remain the same. We don't know what next week will bring but we should at least get some price movenment one way or the other in a big way. So for now we will simply have to wait. Gold was off a few bucks on the futures. The US dollar was higher and interest rates ticked up. The XAU fell 1 1/2, while GDX lost almost 1/2. Volume was very light. My GDX June calls are dead, as they are so far out of the money the most we can hope for is a cut the loss rally on the data next week. The short term technicals for GDX remain at mid-range. The longer term up trend line for GDX remains intact for now and that is about the only thing it has going for it at the moment. The line will either be broken next week or we'll get some kind of decent bounce up from it. Once again it's a waiting game which isn't the best scenario when trading options. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX was up a touch today but is still short term oversold. It's still pretty far off from its 50 day moving average. So here we are. The weekend is upon us with a losing trade in hand. Only a good move higher in the gold shares next week will prevent another unacceptable losing trade. We'll go over the charts this weekend but all we can do is wait. Even if the GDX June call trade makes a comeback it still wasn't managed properly. Asia was higher and Europe lower to close the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.