It was another volatile day on Wall street as we again saw a huge gap lower at the open with the market spending the rest of the day trying to recover. The Dow fell 403 points after being down well over a thousand early on. The advance/declines were 3 to 1 negative. Volume was pretty heavy again. The summation index is trying to turn lower. The NASDAQ continues to be the leader to the downside and that is not a plus. The S&P 500 traded well below support at 6800 during the day but came back to close above it. The short term indicators here have turned lower with room to go. 6800 somehow held today but I'm not sure that it will for the rest of the week. Headline risk is high as we are at the mercy of the next wartime event. Gold got clobbered as the futures fell over two hundred points. The US dollar was higher and so were interest rates but they did drop back from the highs of the day. The XAU fell almost 38 points and GDX lost around 10. Volume was extremely heavy to the downside. The short term indicators on GDX have turned down with room to go. I bailed out of the GDX March put trade but I do still like this idea going forward. My timing getting in was early and the exit today certainly could have been better. GDX can certainly continue to fall from here but the volatility risk right now is pretty high. If we see another rise in the gold shares near term, I'll try the GDX puts again. The gain on the trade was 110%. However with a premature entry followed by a lackluster exit it leaves much to be desired. Hopefully the trading tactics will improve with the next effort. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX was higher today but fell from its highs. Still above the 20 level and we are seeing the volatility that comes with that. The short term indicators here are moving higher and are not yet overbought. So things should remain interesting for the near term. We've got the jobs report due on Friday but will it even matter with the events going on right now in the world? In times like this it is probably best to keep positions small and take profits when you have them. Still plenty of time remaining in the March option cycle. Asia and Europe were down as players head for the exits. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.