Another downer as the Dow fell 69 points on light volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is moving sideways. Short term oversold on the Dow but not the rest of the major indices. The NASDAQ led the way lower today and that is not a plus. I'd still like to try the September SPY puts but it may have to wait until next week. The decline that we've seen in the past few days certainly hasn't been robust. It may be setting up for a return to new all time highs before expiration. That's just a guess on my part. Inflation data on Friday could be a key. Gold was off about five bucks on the futures. The US dollar was slightly higher and interest rates were a bit lower. The XAU and GDX had fractional losses on light volume. Still waiting on GDX to get back to short term oversold. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX closed lower after spiking up early. That doesn't fit with a down day in the market but perhaps it's signaling a return to the rally for stocks. Still short term oversold here though. Running out of time for the September option cycle but I don't want to force things here. I also don't usually do too well with the short term ideas. So we'll see. The market was down today and SPY puts still lost value as time premium is getting sucked out. That's a tough game to play. I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow and go from there. Europe and Asia were lower but Japan bucked the trend. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.