Quite a lackluster session until the final hour when stocks tanked. The Dow fell 305 points on the lately lighter volume. The advance/declines were better than 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower. Producer prices came in where expected and the market bounced around but not dramatically. However in the final hour, sellers showed up to close the day with a loss. The Dow was the leader going lower so it wasn't exactly a broad based sell off. It does put my thesis of higher prices to break through the 4100 level on the S&P by expiration next Friday into jeopardy. In fact it probably entirely shoots it down. We are short term oversold for the S&P 500 but a rally is not materializing. This was how the market acted during the past negative year. We haven't taken out the down trend line in the S&P that began in January. It appears my take on things is wrong and I will have to listen to what the market says. The lack of volume lately should be another clue. I'm now not considering the SPY December calls but will have to go over things this weekend. Gold was up $5 on the futures but was higher early on. The US dollar was slightly higher and interest rates rose. The XAU lost 1 7/8, while GDX shed 1/3. Volume was average. The gold shares gave up all of their gains for the session and then some. I'm still considering the GDX January calls but on the sidelines for now. Mentally I'm a bit confused as the market is not acting the way that I thought it would. Pretty much I'm just wrong as the market is always right. The VIX was up a bit today. The short term technical indicators are getting more overbought but they aren't all the way there yet. I thought that the indicators would roll over here but they haven't. The VIX seems to be saying that there will be more selling near term. Option expiration week is upon us and it usually has a positive bias. Obviously that's not a 100% indicator. I'm not sure what to make of the current price action but like they say, when in doubt stay out. Plenty of work to do over the weekend to try and figure where we go from here. We'll be checking all the charts as usual. Europe and Asia were higher to close out the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.