Just another manic Monday as the song goes. In what was one of the crazier days on Wall street, the Dow gained 99 points on very heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is moving down. It was a one day reversal to the upside as we opened lower and closed higher. A temporary bottom is now in place. At one point the Dow was down over a thousand points. To make all of that back and then some is incredible. Volatility went off the charts. The kind of reversal that we saw today usually means that the decline is over for now. We may come back and test todays low at some point in the future. We saw high volume panic selling today and that marks the end of going lower than todays low of around 4200 for the S&P in the near term. We are still short term oversold here but the indicators have turned back up with todays price action. Gold was up ten bucks on the futures. The US dollar was slightly higher and interest rates slightly higher as well after dropping early on during the market sell off. The XAU fell 1 1/2 and GDX lost 1/4 on good volume. The gold shares were down much more early along with the stock market. I was stopped out of my GDX February call position for a 40% loss. I tried to purchase these calls again at a better strike price but wasn't filled. Frustrating to say the least. GDX looks like it's put in a short term bottom here as well. I suppose that I'll wait for the Fed announcement on Wednesday before deciding where to go from here regarding the gold shares. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX surged past 38 and then came all the way back to close below 30. The short term indicators here have rolled over to relieve the overbought condition. It should mean that volatility will subside but who knows? The VIX has gotten pretty far from its 50 day moving average and should at least try to head back towards it. Today we got extremely oversold during the session and the bounce back that we saw was huge. We will say that the decline is over for now. Once again 4200 should hold on the S&P 500 in the days to come. Longer term, maybe not. Such crazy volatility has increased the option premiums all the way around. I'm back on the sidelines but will be looking for the next trade opportunity. Europe was lower and Asia mixed to begin the trading week. We'll see how things go tomorrow.