It was an extremely volatile session in the stock market today.  We opened down over 200 points in the first ten minutes.  The market then made its way back to being less negative for an hour or so.  We then sold off hard and midway through the day were off 450 points.  The VIX climbed above 30.  But then the Dow made another comeback and finished the day off 173 points on extremely heavy volume.  The advance/declines were negative.  This is the blow off session that I was looking for.  Unfortunately I did not trade it well.  I did get rid of the October OEX puts but I did not get the best price that I could and should have.  My intra-day tactics were poor.  Once again I was not up to the task.  It is a humbling game at times.  The profit was 750% but it could have been better.  The low is now in.  That's my opinion.  GE was up over 1/8 and the volume was extremely heavy.  I'm still going to wait for the earnings report on Friday before I do anything here.  The March calls are the trading idea here.  Gold found a bid and the futures rose ten bucks as the US dollar got crushed.  The XAU was flat however.  ABX, GG and NEM all had slight fractional losses.  Volume was average.  With such a crazy day in the stock market, the gold shares didn't have any sustained interest.  That isn't bullish.  Especially with the dollar getting hammered.  Not sure of what to make of that.  No trades here for now.  Mentally I'm feeling pretty tired.  It has been a while since we've seen this kind of volatility.  The comeback today was impressive and for that reason along with the extended oversold technical condition, I feel confident that the low today will hold up going forward.  We may drift our way back down there over the rest of the month but it should hold.  That is around the 1820 level on the S&P 500.  The extreme volume constitutes a shake out to the downside in my opinion.  I simply did not take full advantage of it and I had my opportunities.  My entry for this trade was very good.  My exit was poor.  Even making whatever money that I did doesn't matter if the trading tactics can't be executed properly.  Perhaps I'll feel different about that tomorrow but I doubt it.  I should have had a better game plan for the day and written it down.  When the market gets crazy like today, that's probably a good idea.  But it doesn't matter now.  Still a couple of days in the October option cycle but I won't be making any more trades this week.  Perhaps some November index calls will be in order.  I do expect to back and fill for a while here though.  Gold found buyers but the gold shares remain stagnant.  That is not a positive.  Perhaps I will lay off trading gold for the rest of the year.  The stock indices had a downside blow off today and I think that the lows are in.  Notice todays chart of the RUT.  I'll be looking for November calls perhaps on a retest of todays lows.  We'll see how the foreign markets react to todays market activity overnight and see what happens tomorrow.