Inflation data came in hot and the market sold off. The Dow fell 337 points on light volume. The advance/declines were better than 2 to 1 negative. The summation index continues lower. The NASDAQ was the leader on the way down again. The was a gap lower on the S&P at the open and then it traded sideways from there. The short term indicators on the S&P are oversold and staying that way. It appears that lower prices are in its future. The S&P 500 also closed below the 3975 up trend line but just barely. Things will probably just get worse from here. Gold was off $8 on the futures. The US dollar was higher along with interest rates. The XAU fell a point and GDX lost 1/3. Volume was average. My GDX March calls are now solid losers. The only reason that I'm still holding them is that they do have 3 weeks to go. The gold shares have remained short term oversold on some of the indicators for 3 weeks. This is not what usually happens. Our other signal that has only showed up 4 times in the last 3 years has even moved lower and is even more oversold. So although we expect some kind of upside for the gold shares here it will most likely not be an extended rally. The bounce is long overdue but markets can stay overbought or oversold longer than you can stay solvent sometimes. Obviously this was a trade that should have been avoided. The entry timing was off and the gold shares have absolutely no interest at the moment from traders or investors. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today but finished off from its best levels. Not sure where the VIX goes from here. Haven't had a good handle on what is going on here with the VIX for a while. We'll go over the charts this weekend as usual but the plan for now is to still hold the GDX call trade until we see some kind of bounce. Hoping at this point to cut the loss to something reasonable but perhaps should have bailed out today and simply moved on. Europe and Asia were lower with the exception of Japan. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.