Once again the Dow got crushed as it fell 613 points on average volume. The advance/declines were around 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is still moving up though. An early morning rally at the open didn't last long and it was all downhill from there. The Dow was again the leader to the downside. My prognosis for the S&P 500 to break its long term down trend line has been put on hold. That index was turned away again at that level and the line remains in effect. Perhaps there was too much agreement that the line was about to break as the bullishness in the media had risen. Whatever the case, the short term indicators for the S&P have rolled over and it closed below the 200 day moving average. I did not purchase any of the SPY January puts today and that was obviously a mistake. I'll try not to beat myself up too much about that. The small stocks are not falling as much as the Dow so perhaps this decline will not last that long. That's my best guess at the moment. The positive option expiration bias has not showed up again. Gold was off a few bucks on the futures. The US dollar finished little changed and interest rates dropped. The XAU fell over a point, while GDX lost about 1/3. Volume was light. The indicators for GDX remain overbought but not extremely so. We will wait for an oversold reading there before putting on the next trade. Mentally I'm feeling a bit down as I was looking to try the SPY puts here but didn't. It would have been a very short term trade and I usually do not fare well on those. However you cannot wait for the perfect set up every time. You can't win if you're not at the table. The VIX was up and closed above 20. The short term indicators here have turned back up with plenty of room to go higher. I though that the VIX would stay oversold and the market would move higher. After todays price action that thesis was wrong. The VIX is still below the 50 day moving average and we'll keep an eye on that particular level. Perhaps the S&P is headed back to the up trend line at 3850 and that's another area to watch near term. A break of that level would put the bulls on the run. However the overall breadth of the market hasn't been bad here and I'm not convinced the bears are going to take over. Asia was higher and Europe mixed overnight. We'll keep an eye on the overnight developments.