Down we went on expiring options Friday as the Dow fell 166 points on expiration heavy volume. The advance/declines were around 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is trying to move lower. My SPY September calls got crushed for a 90% loss. Bad entry, poor management and then got greedy when I had a chance to break even. That's the textbook way not to trade. I didn't use a stop loss order this time around since the price movement is rather volatile during expiration week. The rationale there is that you don't want to be stopped out when the trade has a chance to work. Like all trades win or lose, this one has to be forgotten and you've got to move on. I still favor the SPY October puts going forward but will have to see another bounce in order to purchase. Perhaps some time next week. Make no mistake, the trend is down for stocks. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 did worse than the Dow today. The S&P does remain short term oversold here. Gold finished flat on the day. The US dollar continued higher as did US interest rates. The XAU was off 1 1/4, while GDX lost 1/3. Volume was better than average. Looking at the GDX January calls now but in no rush to purchase. The fundamentals for gold here are not positive in my opinion. Mentally I'm feeling OK despite the huge loss in the SPY trade this week. The VIX spiked up today and closed above the 200 day moving average and the inportant level of 20. The short term indicators also remain overbought. To me this spells trouble going forward for equity prices. If the VIX stays above 20, the decline could get severe. Hasn't happened yet but it is something to definately keep an eye on. Here is another thing to keep in mind. The bounce we got on Wednesday came out of nowhere and had zero follow through. That is a classic sign of a downward trending market. Rallies can be continued to be sold until that changes. We will have to wait for everyone to turn bearish before the market begins to move up again. Asia was higher and Europe lower to close out the week. Plenty of work to do over the weekend to prepare for next week. We'll have the Fed to deal with on Wednesday. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.