The Dow got pounded to begin the last week of October as it lost 650 points on average volume. The advance/declines were 7 to 1 negative. The summation index is now moving down. It could have been worse as we were off 950 points in the morning. Selling everywhere as the realization that a stimulus deal isn't going to happen hit home. The short term technical indicators for the S&P 500 turned lower. The S&P did try to hang on to its 50 day moving average though. 3400 is holding for today but any follow through selling will take that number out. I have been constantly bullish over the past couple of weeks and that prognosis has been proven wrong. Not sure where we go from here. I'm on the sidelines with regards to the SPY for now. GE was off a quarter on good volume. Gold finished little changed on the futures as the US dollar was higher. The gold shares followed the market lower. The XAU lost 2 1/2, while GDX shed almost 2/3. Volume remains light here. Not completely oversold now for the gold shares but we're getting there. My open order for the GDX November calls was finally filled. It's showing a small loss. The calls are out of the money but have plenty of time to work. I'm not exactly sure if this is the right idea for now but after looking at things over the weekend I decided to take the chance. There is the possiblity that we simply go sideways for the gold shares and that is the caveat with this particular idea. I do not think that a huge decline is going to happen with gold right now but my take on things hasn't exactly been right lately. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX spiked up with the huge loss today. We closed above the 200 day moving average and also above the 33 level. The indicators here spiked up as well but there is still some room to go a little higher. Follow through selling tomorrow will take us to short term overbought on the VIX. I'm not sure what is going on here but it appears that we'll be heading lower in a hurry. The market, as always, knows way more than we do. Unless we see some kind of turnaround tomorrow, the selling will continue. It is also looking like a big picture event as markets around the globe sold off. We'll know in due time what the real cause was but for now we'll just have to enjoy the show. There will be opportunities and I hope that I found one today with the gold shares. We'll see. Europe and Asia were lower overnight with the DAX taking the brunt of it. We'll be keeping an eye on the overnight developments.