The Dow held up better than most today but it was an overall negative session for stocks. The industrials were flat on heavy volume. The advance/declines were 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower in a sideways channel. The NASDAQ led the way down again and was off 2%. The S&P 500 was lower and is not yet short term oversold. Inflation data out tomorrow and then the Fed on Wednesday. The trend remains lower until proven otherwise. Perhaps the positive option expiration bias will appear. However we are still in a headline driven volatility market, so anything goes. Gold got clobbered today as the futures fell around $30. The US dollar was steady but interest rates jumped. The XAU lost 7, while GDX fell 1 1/2. Volume was heavy to the downside. I did put in an overnight order for the GDX March calls and it was filled early. I did have a stop loss order in and the price went right through it. It eventually came back to get filled and the loss was just shy of 50%. That fits with the main goal of this year which is not to take big losses. If the position gets cut in half it obviously was the wrong idea or time. I did place another order for the GDX March calls at a closer to the money strike price later in the session. It too was eventually filled and I'm holding it ahead of tomorrows inflation report. That was the original plan to have some GDX calls ahead of that report. Although I'm not sure how long I'll hold this one. It has a slight profit. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up slightly today. The short term indicators are mid-range so we could go either way from here. The market is overdue for some kind of rally but we haven't been able to put anything together lately. Small stocks are on the verge of breaking the recent lows. The 50 day moving average is about to break the 200 day moving average to the downside for the S&P 500. Interesting times. Europe was higher and Asia mixed to begin the week. We'll see how the markets react to the inflation data tomorrow.