We had a huge gap down at the open but the market clawed its way back for the rest of the session. The Dow fell 129 points on good volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is tracking sideways. The NASDAQ was the clear out performer and the S&P 500 made it back to the black as well. I am considering getting some SPY July calls if we get some weakness again before Fridays employment report. My thinking is that we are going to get through the first down trend line for the S&P and then head to the next one at around 4000. It might be too late though as the call option premiums have already moved up. Gold got clobbered today and lost its near term support at $1790. The precious metal futures dropped $35. The US dollar was higher yet interest rates continue to fall. The XAU fell six points, while GDX shed 1 1/4. Volume was good to the downside. There is a longer term RSI indicator for GDX that is almost down to where we can anticipate a bounce. If the indicator gets there, we will try the near term GDX calls. Hasn't happened yet but 2 or 3 more down days for the gold shares will get us there. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was higher today but came back down from the top of todays range. This is implying a lower VIX going forward which would fit with a near term rally for stocks. The VIX is short term oversold here though. The out performance of the small stocks here is a change from what we've seen. It leads me to believe that the summer rally is still in place. The summation index trying to turn around now is another factor to consider. We also have a bottom above a bottom on the daily stock index charts. The fact that todays decline didn't hold is another plus for the bulls near term. Asia higher and Europe lower overnight. We'll keep an eye on the evenings headlines.