Once again sellers had the upper hand as the Dow fell 267 points on good volume. The advance/declines were around 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower. A last half hour bounce kept things from being worse. Something weird is going on here for sure as the Dow has lost ground for nine days in a row while the S&P 500 has traded sideways. The Russell 2000 has been in a steady decline along with the New York Composite. But the NASDAQ has had a slight rise. Oversold on some indices without a bounce and that can be dangerous as in even steeper falling prices. But I am favoring the SPY December calls for a short term trade and might purchase some tomorrow ahead of the Fed. Today in fact may have been the time to get them. The short term indicators for the S&P have rolled over with plenty of room to move lower. But I do believe that some kind of upside bounce is long overdue and we should see one before option expiration on Friday. I could be wrong. I might just stay on the sidelines as well because my track record with the short term trades is pretty poor. Gold was off $9 on the futures. The US dollar was a bit higher and interest rates finished flat again. The XAU lost 1 1/8 and GDX fell 1/4. Volume was light. GDX finished below its 200 day moving average. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was higher today and that fits a down market. The short term indicators are rising but are not yet short term overbought. So there could be a bit more selling before we see some upside according to the VIX. Which would make it hard to purchase the SPY calls with only three days left in the December option cycle. So you can see the predicament here. However I can always wait for the market to settle down as well. I'll ponder what to do overnight. Needless to say the Fed tomorrow will get things moving one way or the other. Asia and Europe were lower as perhaps we're seeing a worldwide retreat at the moment. We'll see if we have a wild Wednesday on the agenda.