Some selling to begin the week as the Dow fell 89 points on good volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index remains in a downward channel. The overall market was much weaker than the Dow, with the NASDAQ leading the way lower. I'm looking at the SPY January puts for a short term trade this week but todays action may already be the beginning of a slide. The short term technical indicators for the S&P 500 are overbought and starting to roll over. That said, it is expiration week which usually has a positve bias. I'm watching things closely and will decide if a trade this week is worth the risk as time goes on. GE was up 1/8 on light volume. Gold was up almost $15 on the futures and the US dollar was positive as well. The XAU dropped 3 1/3, while GDX shed 3/4. Volume was on the light side. The gold shares continue to fall and they are not short term oversold yet. The recent bounce in the US dollar is one of the causes for the gold sell off. As long as it is just a bounce, gold will be moving back to the upside in a couple of weeks or so. I'll be looking at the GDX February calls once we've seen a bottom for the gold shares. The February options have an extra week in the cycle so there is no rush. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX jumped up today but closed below its 50 day moving average. Where we go from here will tell us a lot about this market. More strength in the VIX will lead to a decent sell off. Or if we head lower from here perhaps the VIX can finally break through the 20 level. It's soemthing to keep an eye on. I'll be watching the SPY for the rest of the week and see if a potential trade appears. Asia was mixed and Europe lower overnight. We'll see how things go tomorrow.