Volatility has been the name of the game so far this week.  The Dow got clobbered today and fell 800 points on heavy volume.  The advance/declines were 5 to 1 negative.  The summation index is heading lower.  The data out of China and Germany was weak but there is something else going on here that I just can't put my finger on.  The market is truly worried about something but I certainly don't know what it is.  The short term indicators for the major averages have turned back down but they are simply going back and forth each day now.  We did practically close on the lows for the session so that doesn't bode well for tomorrow.  But who knows?  We could be up 500 points at the open.  My SPY August puts went from big losers to big winners.  It was a trading miracle.  I'm still hanging on to them as I expect some follow through downside tomorrow.  But anything goes so far this week.  US retail sales will be out tomorrow and that will get things going one way or the other.  GE was off 1/3 and the volume was heavy.  Gold rose $14 on the futures as it continues to perform well here in uncertain times.  The US dollar showed a slight gain.  The XAU and GDX had slight fractional losses on good volume.  Perhaps some shares had to be sold for margin calls.  That's a guess as the gold shares haven't been following the metal lately.  Mentally I'm feeling tired as the volatility filled trading sessions are taking a toll.  it isn't so bad when you don't have a position.  But when you've got a trade out there that must be monitored, it's a different story.  I'm surprised that I've held on to this trade this long.  The VIX had a huge spike today but it isn't overbought yet.  Another bump up tomorrow and I'm out of the SPY put trade.  In fact with only a couple of sessions left in the August option cycle I should be out of the trade tomorrow regardless.  It is at the mercy of tonights headlines and tomorrow mornings data.  The weekly up trend line for the S&P 500 has now been broken again.  Last week we were able to close back above it.  This week I'm not so sure but anything can happen when the markets get crazy like this.  I am however getting the feeling that there's something going on under the surface that we'll maybe find out about later.  It looks like we are going to test the lows of last week at 2825 for the S&P.  If they don't hold there's the 200 day moving average at about 2800.  Asia was up and Europe down in last nights trading action.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow.