The Dow fell 250 points on a partial holiday Monday to begin the week. The advance/declines were negative and volume was pretty light. The summation index is still tracking sideways. The market rallied early on in the morning and I was stopped out of my SPY October puts for a 30% loss. Then things turned around back to the downside for the rest of the session to finsh near the lows of the day. There is nothing more frustrating than to get stopped out of a trade only to see it work the way it was supposed to. The down trend line for the S&P 500 remains in force and I do believe that we'll be going even lower from here. I did try and buy some more SPY October puts after I was stopped out but the order wasn't filled. The short term technical indicators for the S&P are starting to roll over. Gold was off a couple bucks as the US dollar was higher and rates ticked up slightly. The XAU and GDX had slightly fractional losses on light volume. The short term indicators here are beginning to roll over as well. Mentally I'm trying not to let getting stopped out of the SPY trade affect me going forward. There's only 4 days to go in the October option cycle and trying another trade here would be very risky. That said if we do happen to move up tomorrow morning, I may be willing to attempt the SPY puts again. But I feel that it may already be too late. The VIX was up today and that fits the downside that we saw. It is right at the 20 level. A rise above 20 will bring more volatility and more selling. That's what I believe will happen. I could be wrong. Inflation data due on Wednesday and Thursday will most likely be moving the markets. Asia was generally higher and Europe mixed to begin the trading week overseas. We'll keep an eye on the overngiht developments.