More selling to begin the week as the Dow fell 482 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were better than 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving down. Stocks did finish up from their lows of the session. It looks like this is a retest of the lows from the end of January and so far things have held up. The bulls need to show up here or the measuring objective of the head and shoulders top on the S&P 500 is the 3800 area or lower. Ideally I'd like to see things hold here, a light volume rally back to the down trend line and that would set us up for the March SPY puts. The premiums on the puts now are inflated due to the time left and the current volatility. Russia vs. Ukraine is still dominating the headlines but this won't go on forever. The S&P 500 remains below its 200 day moving average but is short term oversold. Any sign of something that avoids an all out war should spur a rally. Gold finished up only a buck after being higher early on. The US dollar and interest rates finished little changed. The XAU fell a couple points, while GDX shed over 1/3. Volume was average. GDX remains short term overbought and I'm trying to remain patient here before attempting the calls again. Gold has had a good run and some kind of move lower or consolidation is due in my opinion. However we have seen money come into the precious metals and I believe that they have more room to go on the upside longer term. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was higher today but there is a black candlestick on the daily chart which could turn the VIX lower in the near term. The short term technical indicators here are still pointing up though. So this indicator is giving mixed signals. The NASDAQ didn't lead the way down today and that's a slight plus. We're at an important juncture for the market right now so paying close attention is necessary even more than usual. Asia was lower but Europe finished mixed. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.