Back to the downside today but a last hour bounce kept things from being worse. The Dow fell 458 points on good volume. The advance/declines were 5 to 1 negative. The summation index is still moving down. The NASDAQ led the way lower. The S&P 500 is holding the 3600 for now and remains short term overbought. Still far away from the 50 day moving average here so I think that 3600 will hold for now. But that's just a guess on my part. We'll get inflation data tomorrow morning and see what happens after that. What we really need to experience is some kind of wash out to the downside event to know for sure that the decline is over. When everybody just throws in the towel on heavy volume. Hasn't happened yet. Gold was flat on the day after being lower early. The US dollar was lower for a second day in a row, while interest rates ticked up. The XAU was up 1 1/8 and GDX added a dime. Volume was good here again. The gold shares are starting to be out performers and we haven't seen that in a while. I'm still holding on to the GDX October calls and they somehow are still showing a small profit. What I've noticed here for the GDX call options is that the premiums are pretty high compared to where the underlying index is. That usually means that the market makers know something and are making you pay up to participate. We'll see how it plays out going forward. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was higher today but came off of its best levels. Yesterday I thought the VIX was implying higher stock prices. Lately I just can't figure this indicator out. Above the 30 level and still short term overbought. We'll get the Feds preferred inflation gauge tomorrow and that should provide for an interesting market open. My thought is that it could go either way. We also have the end of the month and the quarter on tap. Asia was mixed and Europe lower overnight. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.