Today had summer Monday written all over it as the Dow was up 26 points on light volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index continues lower. The NASDAQ along with the S&P 500 outperformed the Dow. The short term indicators for the NASDAQ and the S&P have both turned up but remain in oversold territory. I did place an order for the SPY August calls overnight but it wasn't filled. We needed to see some weakness today to really get this trade and we only got a little on the open. The market rarely cooperates. We might get a chance later in the week to try this again but time would be running out. It would have been an in on Monday and out on Tuesday type of trade because we are looking for weakness as the week goes on. However we'll just have to move on and look for the next opportunity. Gold was off $7 on the futures. The US dollar was higher and interest rates were up slightly. The XAU was down 1 2/3, while GDX shed 1/2. Volume remains pretty light here as interest in the gold shares is lacking. The gold shares did come back from their worst levels of the day though. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX was down just a bit today. The short term indicators here are mid-range. The VIX does remain above its 50 day moving average. Options expiration week is here. We're looking for strength early in the week, weakness in the middle followed by buying towards the end. That's the best guess from here. It may be uneventful as we are in the middle of August. There's still some earnings reports to trickle in but most of that is out of the way. Europe was generally up and Asia lower to begin the week. We'll keep an eye on the overnight devleopments.