It seemed much like a day of hanging around as the Dow rose 51 points on light volume. The advance/declines were slightly positive. The summation index is now tracking sideways. Considering the recent price action, todays lack of volatility was somewhat of a surprise to me. None of the major averages finished with big moves. The S&P 500 continues to climb up from the lows on Monday. The short term indicators here are approaching mid-range. What they do there will tell the story. If they keep moving up is looks like a V bottom will be in place. If they roll back over a retest of the lows may be in order. Plenty of economic data due out next week including inflation numbers. Not to mention that it's option expiration week. So things will get interesting. Gold was up $4 on the futures. The US dollar finished little changed as did most interest rates. The XAU was up 1 1/4 and GDX added a little over 1/4. Volume was extremely light as there is no interest one way or the other for the gold shares at the moment. My GDX August calls are somehow almost back to break even. I though long and hard about just selling them today and taking the loss. But I decided to let the weekend play out and we'll see how thngs open up on Monday. No signal one way or the other with the short term indicators for GDX right now. Unless we see gold rally next week this trade isn't going anywhere. Plus with it still being out of the money the odds for a profit are lower. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX continued to fall and is now back to the 20 level. What happens here will say a lot about the market as well. If the VIX bounces off of 20 we'll see more selling and move volatility. If the VIX continues to fall through the 20 level, the V bottom scenario has more credibility. Some of the short term indicators on the VIX are oversold but not completely so. Quite a week it was but the market didn't fall apart as it looked like it was going to on Monday. There is a down trend line that coincides with the 50 day moving average for the S&P at the 5450 level. If we somehow make it back to there next week, that would be the time to try the SPY August puts for a short term trade. But we'll go over the charts this weekend just to be sure. Asia and Europe were higher to close out the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.