Headline risk. It's always out there and today we got a taste of it. The Dow fell 375 points today on good volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is still moving up. The Dow was up around 200 points with an hour and a half to go in the trading session. It was an uneventful Tuesday in October. All of a sudden the headline passed on the wire. The US president has canceled the stimulus talks until after the election. The market did not like that and decided to give up all of its gains and then some. I'm not sure how long the drop will last but we'll most likely get some follow through selling in the morning. We now have bearish dark cloud cover on the daily stock index candlestick charts. It is probably too late for the SPY October puts but we'll see. SPY did make it to 342 today but the market was cruising along and I did not want to try the puts. Opportunity missed or so it seems. GE lost 1/4 on heavy volume. Some kind of negative IRS news there. Gold got pummeled after the stimulus was placed on the back burner. The futures fell well over twenty bucks and back below the $1900 level. The US dollar was higher. The XAU dropped 5 3/4, while GDX fell 1 1/2. Volume picked up to the downside. I adjusted my open order for the GDX October calls and it hasn't been filled. I'm not sure this is the right trade to do now because the fundamental background has now changed with no stimulus bill in sight. The short term technical indicators have now also rolled over and are heading back down to oversold. Perhaps going out to the November option cycle has a better chance of showing a profit. Or not. I'll check things over again tonight. Mentally I'm feeling a bit distracted. Outside events are creeping in but I'll do my best to focus on what needs to be done here. The VIX was higher today as it should be. Once again the rising VIX yesterday with the rise in market prices preceded a drop. It is simply another reminder that the market knows all. There's still some room on the short term indicators to move up before the VIX is overbought. That means we should see some more weakness in the near future. Of course we could get another headline overnight and things could change again. There's plenty of room in the S&P 500 indicators to move lower though. Perhaps we'll make it back for a test of the recent lows. Or we may just move sideways from here. Maybe the market will simply move back up higher tomorrow from here but I doubt that scenario. If it sounds like there's a lot of uncertainty now, there is. I'll check things again tonight and take it from there. Europe and Asia were higher last night but that will probably change tonight. We'll see what tomorrow brings.