Stabilization was the best we could do today as the Dow finally broke its losing streak by finishing ahead 15 points on heavy volume again. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is heading down with conviction and is now approaching the zero line. This could spell even more trouble as the market simply falls apart when crossing the zero line on the summation index. It is a rare event. We can say that the market already fell apart yesterday. We've got option expiration tomorrow as well so things will be volatile. Throw in the inflation data before the market opens and you see what kind of day it could be. We are still long overdue for some kind of bounce but I've been saying that for days. The NASDAQ and S&P 500 had slight losses ahead of tomorrows fireworks. The short term indicators for the S&P are still pointing down with room to go before hitting oversold. I'm not sure what will happen next but we certainly can't rule anything out. I'm on the sidelines probably for the rest of the year when it comes to the option trading. Too many mistakes in the second half of the year has cut into my profits. Gold dropped $40 on the futures. The US dollar was up and interest rates were generally higher. The XAU was off a point and GDX slipped over 1/8. Volume was average. Short term oversold for GDX and staying that way for now. The fundamental picture for gold has turned negative at this point. If and when it gets to the 30 level is where we'll take a look at the GDX calls again. Mentally I'm doing OK considering yesterdays trading debacle. The VIX was lower today as the the market didn't collapse again. Still short term overbought here. Not sure what to expect next with the VIX but it usually doesn't stay overbought for an extended period of time. However we are in a crazy moment for the markets so anything goes here as well. If we can get through tomorrow we have a holiday week coming up when things usually settle down. Europe and Asia were down as traders are heading for the exits. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.