Sellers took over today and the market got clobbered. The Dow fell 748 points on expiration heavy volume. The advance/declines were around 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is beginning to turn down. Not sure exactly what happened today but the techncial landscape has changed. The NASDAQ led the way down and that is not a plus. The S&P 500 dropped 1 3/4% and back to its 50 day moving average. The short term indicators here have now rolled over, heading lower with room to go. We will have to figure out if today was expiration related or the beginning of something sustained to the downside. I'm inclined to think that it's the latter but we'll have to go over things this weekend to be sure. Gold was off $7 on the futures. The US dollar was a little higher and interest rates dropped. The gold shares followed the overall market lower. The XAU fell 6 2/3, while GDX dropped 1 1/2. Volume was good to the downside. Today GDX broke through the up trend line that had been in place since thestart of 2025. The short term indicators here are now moving lower with room to go. If GDX gets to short term oversold I'm going to try the calls here. I don't think that traders have lost interest in gold yet as the metal itself continues to attract capital. Ideally if the stock market tanks and takes GDX with it that would be the time to purchase some gold share calls. However the market rarely cooperates with your best laid plans. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX jumped up today and closed on its upper Bollinger band. The short term indicators have moved up from oversold. I thought that the VIX would continue lower from here and that was wrong. Not sure what to expect next here as we don't know if today was a one day wonder of the beginning of something real to the downside for stocks. I'll go over the charts this weekend to try and come up with a near term game plan for next week. Rolling into the March option cycle. Europe was mixed and Asia higher with the exception of India to finish the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.