Minor gains were posted today as the Dow rose 119 points on average volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is trending lower. We had a small gap up at the open, rallied for a couple of hours but then sold off for the rest of the session. None of the major averages could keep the lions share of their intra-day gains. For some reason stocks cannot find any traction here during expiration week. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 are starting to turn sideways. Gold jumped as the US treasury secretary indicated that they would be buying more bonds to keep rates down. The precious metal futures were up $146 to over $4500. The US dollar got clobbered and longer term interest rates dropped. The XAU climbed over 32 points and GDX was up around 8 1/2. Volume was heavy to the upside. The short term indicators for GDX have turned back up in overbought territory. The pullback to the broken down trend line that we were looking for never happened. The gold shares simply took off to the upside and never looked back. GDX is up over 30% in 2 1/2 weeks. The gold shares have far outperformed gold itself. Not sure how much longer that can go on but I'm still a fan of the GDX September calls if we see some selling in the gold shares. However the ideal timing for this trade was missed by us once again. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today which fits with an upside market. The short term indicators remain in oversold territory. I'm not sure where this indicator heads next. Still remaining on the sidelines for now with regards to the SPY and GDX options. Asia and Europe were mostly lower overnight. I'll keep an eye on tonights headlines.