Bouncing higher today but mostly in the overall market as the Dow was down 37 points on light volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index continues lower. Both the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 had decent gains on the session with the NASDAQ up over 200 points. That's a plus for the market. The short term indicators have turned back up for these two indices. Now the question is whether this is the beginning of a real advance or just a dead cat bounce? I suppose you could make a case for either one. Just rolling into the September option cycle so premiums are high. We've got the Fed chairman making a speech on Friday but that seems pretty far off right now. I guess we'll see if the SPY makes it back to its 50 day moving avergae and take it from there. That comes in at the 444 level along with a short term down trend line. There are more bears out there now so trying the SPY puts isn't as sure as it was in the August option cycle. Gold was up $7 on the futures. The US dollar was just a touch lower and interest rates rose. The XAU and GDX had fractional gains on light volume. My order is still out there for the GDX September calls. Not sure if I should just leave it, adjust it or just forget about it. The gold shares remain short term oversold. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was a bit lower today. The short term indicators here have stalled but they are still in overbought territory. Still below the 200 day moving average here. I suppose that if the market continues higher from here on light volume we will consider the SPY puts ahead of Fridays Fed chairman speech. But we all know that the market rarely cooperates with our best laid plans. If we could get said rally and the McClellan oscillator back to the zero line, that would be the ideal set up. We'll see. Asia was mixed and Europe generally higher to begin the trading week. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.