Well, there is something going on in the markets we just don't know what. The Dow rose 52 points on better than average volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is moving down. The inflation data came in light and the the market had a gap higher at the open. The rally lasted all of half an hour and sellers once again took over. With two hours to go we were back in negative territory. Things went back and forth from there before the close. The NASDAQ managed to hold on to its daily up trend line. Both it and the S&P 500 remain short term oversold. I think that we may have to go out to the SPY September option cycle to try the puts here. But we'll have to wait and see how the week finishes. Gold was off $4 on the futures. The US dollar ened higher after being down early. Interest rates were up despite the tame inflation numbers. The XAU and GDX had slight fractional gains on light volume. Still short term oversold on GDX. Will we consider trading the GDX calls here with about a week to go in the August option cycle? We'll see. Mentally I'm in a bit of a quandary as we want to try the SPY puts but cannot seem to time the entry. The VIX was all over the place and finished little changed. The short term indicators here are starting to curl back up which would imply more selling and volatility on the way. The market always knows more than we do. The recent erratic price action has a reason that we do not know but that will eventually become apparent to all. By then it will be too late. Most likely we will let tomorrow go by and try to figure things out over the weekend. Europe and Asia had gains overnight. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.