Buyers showed up today in the final hour and the Dow rose 84 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is heading lower. We were down for much of the session until the last hour reprieve. The NASDAQ led the way higher and that's a plus. The S&P 500 is hanging in there after breaking support. It remains short term oversold. We are overdue for something more than just a bounce. The bearishness is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Perhaps we'll get some kind of relief rally after the Fed on Wednesday. Most of the techncial indicators for the overall market are blown out to the downside. This condition cannot continue indefinately. Option premiums for the SPY remain overpriced due to the volatility. Gold got smashed today as the futures dropped about fifty bucks. The US dollar was higher along with interest rates. The XAU was off 2 1/8, while GDX shed 3/8. Volume was good. The gold shares did finish up from their lows of the session and held up rather well considering the drop in gold itself. The early drop in GDX blew through my stop limit loss order so I simply bailed out at the market. This caused the loss to be more than the limit price as the trade lost 75%. Not a lot of money involved here but the percentage loss was more than the acceptable limit. But that can happen in fast markets. I did place another order for the GDX calls at a lower strike price but canceled it a few hours later. I'm debating whether I want to try this again or not. Oversold to be sure for the gold shares but gold is down to the support at around $1850 and buyers have disappeared. Silver bounced near the support at $22 today. I'll consider what to do overnight. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX reversed lower today and perhaps is signaling that the decline is over. Perhaps being the key word there. Still short term overbought for the VIX but it is up in the area where it has turned back down recently. Everybody knows the Fed is raising rates on Wednesday so maybe it is already in the markets and the selling will subside. There's still plenty of time left in the May option cycle. Asia had a partial holiday for May day but what was open was lower along with Europe with the exception of the FTSE. We'll see how things go tomorrow.