Headline risk returned as overnight it was reported that the US president had contracted the pandemic virus. The Dow had a huge gap lower at the open and was down over 400 points. It tried to recover throughout the session and finished with a loss of 137 points on average volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is barely moving higher. The overall market was much weaker than the Dow with the NASDAQ leading the way lower. That implies that there is more downside to come. Volatility has taken center stage again. The jobs report was a bit light but it remained in the background. Two weeks to go in the October option cycle and I get the feeling that anything can happen. However the market did hold up as far as the Dow is concerned because things could have been a lot worse. GE was up over 1/8 on average volume. Gold was slightly lower on the futures as the US dollar was a bit higher. The XAU was off 1 3/4, while GDX shed around 2/3. Volume remains light. Gold bounced around but could not support a gain despite the new uncertainty thrown into the picture. We could just be stuck in a low volume sideways trend until further notice. I canceled my open order for the GDX October calls but may try again next week if we continue to drift lower. Perhaps I'll look out to November but that option cycle has an extra week. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX spiked higher and finished in the black but did come off of the best levels for the day. The short term technical indicators here have now turned back up. We are now at the mercy of the US presidents health and there is no predicting how that will go. It would not be out of the question to simply step aside here but I'll be looking for some kind of technical signal to trade off of. The market here to me seems pretty resilient. I'm still a believer for now that the decline is over but a sideways drift isn't out of the question. The short term technical picture for the S&P 500 looks like it wants to roll over but the medium term indicators appear to be trying to stabalize and perhaps turn back up. Trading here is choppy and being nimble is probably the best strategy for now. I'll go over the charts again this weekend and try to come up with a game plan for next week. Most of Asia remains on holiday but Japan was lower. Europe finished mixed. It's Friday afternoon and time for a rest.