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Friday, August 21, 2015

Crash, as we are now down over 1000 points in three days.  The Dow got clocked again today on expiration Friday.  The most watched index fell 530 points on extremely heavy volume.  The advance/declines were 6 to 1 negative.  We have dropped through the zero line on the summation index and fallen apart on cue.  Very short term oversold but when the conditions as they are now, it doesn't matter.  I'm not sure how far down we go here but anything is possible.  Monday will be interesting.  Everybody is heading to the exits.  I expected this long trading range in the S&P 500 to resolve itself to the upside but I was wrong.  What I thought was a bottom being formed around the zero line in the summation index turned out to be a ledge to fall off of.  We had flirted with breaking through lower in the past weeks but now it has happened.  Volatility is off the charts and I'm not sure where we'll bounce from but it will happen at some point next week.  I'm sticking with the theory that rallies can be shorted from here on out.  GE lost 60 cents on heavy volume.  Gaps to the downside here on the daily chart.  Support is at $23.  Perhaps I'll try the November calls if we get there.  Oversold on a short and medium term basis but there isn't any hurry to purchase anything in this environment.  Gold was up a little over $5 today which wasn't much considering the market carnage and the drop in the US dollar.  Perhaps gold was being sold to make margin calls but that's a guess as usual.  The gold shares fell, which isn't bullish going forward.  The XAU lost 1 1/2 and GDX dropped 3/8.  Volume was good.  The daily candlestick charts here now have a bearish look to them and the short term technical indicators are overbought.  My ABX October calls are still in the red.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  Of course not being able to take advantage of this precipitous drop in the S&P 500 is frustrating.  But considering it has happened in the last 3 days of option expiration week, I can't beat myself up too much.  Taking positions with such little time left before expiration is a game that I don't usually play.  The fact that we have hovered around the zero line for weeks without a breakdown is another reason that I won't beat myself up so much for missing this move.  But I think we all know that the only thing that matters now is where we go from here.  Rolling into the September option cycle with all this volatility means that the premiums will be sky high.  I'm pretty sure that the next support in the S&P 500 is around 1900.  I don't know how fast we'll get to there but that would be a good level to start looking for some calls.  Of course I will have to check the charts out over the weekend.  We closed on the low of the day again and that is bearish.  There's also history of the Monday after a Friday like this as being pretty ugly.  So there is much to ponder over the next 2 days.  Gold has found some interest but it certainly isn't as robust as I would like to see in an environment like this.  The gold shares could be acting better here as well but they aren't so far.  I'd still like to at least see gold reach the resistance at $1180 and then $1225.  But the markets don't care about what I'd like to see.  Let's not forget that we're in a technical situation that doesn't happen too often.  The magnitude of the drop here is unknown.  It is a time to be careful and not risk a whole lot on any idea.  Plenty of work to do this weekend but for now it's Friday afternoon and time for a rest.

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