Lower we go as the Dow fell 346 points on very heavy volume. The advance/declines were 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower. It could have been worse as we were off about twice that intra-day. Oversold for the major averages and below the lower Bollinger bands. The S&P 500 could not hold its 50 day moving average. It seems a bit stretched to the downside here to me, so a bounce is in the cards soon. But where we are heading is the main question. The NASDAQ has led the way lower and is already off over 10%. I don't think that we're headed for an extended downturn but I certainly can't say that for sure. The rise in rates is the excuse and they were higher today. The Fed chairman spoke but it did not appease the market. We'll see how things go with the employment report tomorrow. GE bucked the trend again with a gain of 1/8 on very heavy volume. Gold fell and closed below $1700. The precious metal futures dropped over a dozen. The US dollar had a strong day. The XAU was off 1 1/8, while GDX was flat. Volume was good. The gold shares have held up rather well despite the drop in the metal recently. I would like to try the GDX calls again as it remains oversold and appears to be trying to form a base. I did place another order for the March calls last night but canceled it during the session today. I'll consider it again tonight. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX spiked above 30 today but then fell back. The short term indicators here turned back up but are not yet overbought. Ideally I'd like to see a reading between 35 and 40 to let me know the decline is over. The market rarely cooperates. It's possible that we see a rally in stocks tomorrow and the VIX rolls back over. The only thing that we can say with reason is that volatility has picked up and the recent daily uptrend lines in the indices have been broken. Where we go from here is the main question. I'll look over things again tonight and try to come up with an answer. Europe and Asia were lower overnight. We'll close out the week tomorrow.