An interesting Friday as the Dow dropped 195 points on extremely heavy volume. It wasn't so bad as we were down over 300 at one point. A final hour save the day bounce came in to help things. Well they're trying to hold things up here. Advance/declines were 5 to 1 negative. Bear Stearns is going under. That's basically what's happening here but it'll be called a bailout. Everybody wanted to get their money out today and Bear just doesn't have it. Same thing would happen if everybody showed up at your local bank on the same day to withdraw their money. Anyway the option premiums are crazy with out of the money stuff still way overpriced with just 4 days to go. The inflation data was mild but it doesn't matter when major brokerages are failing. Will there be others? Stay tuned. Gold was up 5 bucks but was higher. The XAU rose a point. ABX and GG were up a touch on heavy volume while NEM lost a bit. The dollar is in free fall and everybody loves gold. This won't go on forever but there seems to be no stopping it at the moment. GE lost about 1/2 on heavy volume. It made a comeback along with the overall market. Mentally I'm doing OK, not feeling too well at the moment. No trades on the horizon with 4 days left in the option cycle. That could change but we do have the Fed on Tuesday. The markets are very volatile at the moment. If there is a decent signal, I'll do something but otherwise preservation of capital isn't a bad thing. In the last hour or so today the market moved 200 points one way and then 100 points the other. You've got to be able to handle that. For now it's the weekend and time for a break. A check of the charts and perhaps a game plan for April.