Another loser as the Dow fell 186 points on heavy volume.  The advance/declines were negative but it wasn't even 2 to 1.  That is one of the things that leads me to believe that this isn't the end of the world here.  The summation index is heading lower but not with any steam.  The overall market was stronger than the Dow.  We did break the up trend line from October today in some of the major averages but came back to close right on the line.  Volatility has been pretty rampant lately.  But I do not see any type of crash event or falling apart for stocks here.  The OEX January call trade that I did was a 100% loss.  My theory and timing were way off.  The stop loss order I placed did not work and I should have just exited when that happened.  I suppose that I still do not have the discipline necessary to be consistently successful.  However my take on the stock market for the beginning of 2015 was way off.  There will never be any profits with those kind of mistakes.  GE was off a few cents after being lower on the session.  The volume was good.  Short term oversold for GE now.  Earnings on Friday.  My GE March calls are in the red and almost to the 50% loss threshold.  I'm going to wait on the earnings here.  Gold was flat on the futures as we did not see any flight to safety here.  The US dollar was a bit lower today.  The XAU fell 2 points and GDX had a small fractional loss.  The weakness in the gold shares the past two days may be a sign of things to come.  Or not.  We'll have to see how it plays out.  Working off the short term overbought condition is one way to look at it.  USO was up 3/4 on good volume and that is the best day we've seen there in a while.  Maybe I sold those February calls too early.  Mentally I'm doing OK.  A rough start to the year for stocks but I don't think that we are on the verge of a rout.  The major stock indexes are getting to short term overbought.  I could be mistaken but I think that we will start to move higher from here.  If oil can stabilize, that fear will be removed.  Retail sales did come in weaker than expected but that is just one months data.  I'm still a believer that this will be a good year for the stock market.  Nothing to do but wait on GE for Fridays numbers.  It could be the catalyst that starts to turn the market higher.  Or it could have the opposite effect.  We'll see.  My trading so far this year has been a disaster.  Stop loss orders that weren't filled, poor market judgment, terrible timing and lack of discipline.  Perhaps a break is necessary.  Maybe after this GE trade is completed.  I think that I had too many trades going on at the same time to start the new year as well.  I'm going to have to just keep things simple.  Only two days left in the trading week and the January option cycle.  We'll keep an eye on the overnight action and see what tomorrow brings.