A rally springs up out of nowhere as the Dow soared 653 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were 3 to 1 positive. The summation index is back to trying to turn up again. It remains trading in a channel below the zero line in negative territory. Commodities fell today led by oil and that could be one of the excuses for the rise. Oversold conditions is another and now the short term indicators for the S&P 500 have turned up. The NASDAQ led the way higher today and that's a plus. We'll get inflation data tomorrow and we'll see how the market reacts to that. I do think that as time goes on we'll still see lower prices for stocks. The market is in a down trend until proven otherwise. Gold got clobbered today as what goes up in a straight line usually falls back like that too. The precious metal futures dropped almost $45. The US dollar was lower and interest rates were up. The XAU fell 1 1/2, while GDX shed 3/8. Volume was good. The gold shares came back from their worst levels early in the morning. Considering the huge drop in gold the gold shares continued to attract capital. I did place an overnight order for some GDX March calls in case of a drop and it got filled first thing in the morning. The gold shares are both short and medium term overbought. This is a trade in normal times that wouldn't make sense at all. But these are not normal times. I wanted to try the calls ahead of the inflation data due out and somehow the order was filled because the price I was willing to pay wasn't even near the closing price yesterday. But we got a big decline early and now we're in the trade. It is showing a small profit. Remember what I said about needing to be nimble and quick? Hopefully I can be and probably will be out of this trade tomorrow morning. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX dropped today but remains above the 30 level. More overbought than oversold here. Ideally we'd like to see this indicator fall back to the 50 day moving average as the S&P 500 makes its way back to the down trend line that began in January. That would give us a chance to try the SPY puts. But the market rarely cooperates with our best laid plans. We're still at the mercy of the Russian/Ukraine conflict for now. Asia was mixed while Europe had huge rallies. We'll keep an eye on what happens overnight and see how the markets react to the inflation data tomorrow.