No buyers to be found as the Dow fell 405 points on average volume. The advance/declines were around 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving down. The Dow continues to lead the way lower which isn't the usual case. Producer prices out tomorrow and it probably won't be good news but who knows? More weight is attached to Fridays consumer price gauge so we should see some fireworks in the marketplace then. Too late for the SPY September puts at this point unless the market goes into free fall. The S&P 500 has now barely broken through the up trend line on the daily chart that began in April. The short term indicators there are still moving down. There remains some support at the 7600 level but the mood lately has been negative and sellers have control for now. Gold was up a couple bucks on the futures. The US dollar finished flat and interest rates continue to rise. The XAU was up 4 1/2 and GDX rose a point. Volume was light. The short term indicators for GDX are now stalling at the mid-range level. I still like the idea for the GDX September calls at some point before next weeks option expiration. However we don't have a clear technical signal one way or the other at the moment. We do not want to guess what will happen ahead of two days of inflation data. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX continues higher and the short term indicators are moving up. Not yet overbought here so more near term selling is not out of the question. Still well below the 20 level though. We sit on the sidelines for now as we look back and see that the big rally out of nowhere last Thursday was the time to try the September SPY puts. The thought did cross my mind but we had not seen a prior big decline ahead of it which is usually how it works. I will keep my eyes open for some type of trade before next Friday though. Asia and Europe were down overnight. We will keep an eye on the evenings news.