Stocks headed back down today as the Dow fell 469 points on good volume. The advance/declines were shy of 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is back to heading lower. The fact that it is close to the zero line must be taken into account. Things will get ugly if we don't see a turnaround. The NASDAQ led the way lower again, this time dropping over 500 points. The S&P 500 lost over a hundred. The short term indicators on the S&P turned back down in oversold territory. It closed at a new low for the year. The bears are in charge. Tomorrow should be interesting. Who will want to own stocks ahead of the weekend? Gold got clobbered as the futures fell $191. The US dollar was higher and so were interest rates. The XAU dipped 12 1/2 and GDX lost 3 3/4. This time volume was good to the downside. The short term indicators for GDX turned lower in oversold territory following the overall market. What we would like to see is the gold shares falling to a new low for the chance to try the GDX April calls. Markets rarely cooperate however. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today and remains above the 20 level. The short term indicators here are back to pointing up. No telling where the VIX is going next. But if we see the summation index plow through the zero line, the VIX will be headed higher. As I stated earlier we have to be aware of this possibility due to the current location of the summation index. It is usually nowhere near the zero line. When it goes through that line things fall apart. Things need to turnaround in a hurry to avoid this. Anything is possible when markets are held hostage to the next sound bite. Europe and Asia were down with the exception of India. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.