The picture was mixed today but the downside did not go away. The Dow fell 475 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is heading lower. The Dow took the brunt of the selling, with the NASDAQ ending up ositive on the day. Most of the major stock indices are either challenging or trying to stay at their 50 day moving averages. The S&P 500 is at its 50 day and is not yet completely oversold. The up trend line from November has been violated. The longer term weekly up trend line from a year ago is in jeopardy as well. So next weeks price action will be pretty important. With the summation index heading lower, I'm looking for lower prices. GE was off 1/4 on average volume. Gold got clobbered to end the month. The futures shed forty bucks as the US dollar was higher. The XAU lost 6 1/2, while GDX dropped 1 1/4. Volume was above average. Oversold both short and medium term for the gold shares. I may try the GDX March calls if GDX gets to 30. That's about a point away. Many of the technical indicators for GDX are pointing to at least a bounce in the next couple of sessions. However if the stock market continues to fall apart it will take the gold shares with it. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX finished slightly lower today after bouncing around. The short term techncial indicators here are starting to curl down. But that doesn't mean they can't simply turn back up. Not completely overbought for the VIX yet. We'll find out next week if this is just another blip in the road on the way up or something that lasts a while longer. Plenty of charts to peruse over the weekend before the beginning of a new month. Asia had some big losses and Europe was negative as well. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.