We bounced around today after yesterdays wild ride and the Dow ended with a loss of 66 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index continues lower. Waiting to hear from the Fed tomorrow. I still think that a short term bottom is in place as the S&P 500 remains short term oversold. My guess is that we will rally tomorrow no matter what the Fed says because of the oversold nature of things both short and medium term for the market. But we are heading through the zero line on the summation index and falling apart is the prognosis. The early thousand point drop yesterday confirms it. So rather than guess as to what is about to occur I'll be on the sidelines with regards to the SPY for now. Gold contiued to rise as the futures gained around $7 and touched the $1850 level. The US dollar finished little changed after being higher early on. Interest rates rose. The XAU was up 1 1/2, while GDX added almost 1/4. Volume was average. The GDX call trade that I was stopped out on yesterday has made it back to break even. That is one of the problems using stops. You can be knocked out of the trade before it has a chance to work. On the flip side if you don't use stops it can end up causing you to lose more money by holding on to a position that never comes back. As was the case with the previous GDX trade at the end of last year. My goal for this year is to not take any huge losses so I guess I'll simply be at the mercy of the stops. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was higher today and is back above 30. Still overbought as well. What I'm getting from this is simply to expect more volatility. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Option premiums are elevated and staying in cash for now isn't the worst thing to do. Except you won't make any money that way but you won't lose any either. Europe was higher and Asia lower in last nights trade. We'll see what the Fed has to say tomorrow and the markets reaction to it.