Hawkish Fed comments sent the Dow reeling today as it lost 575 points on lighter volume. The advance/declines were around 4 to 1 negative. The summation index is back to moving lower. The Dow led the way down. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 have now rolled over or are about to. The daily candlestick chart here shows a bearish pattern which indicates yet lower values to come. We'll get more talk from the Fed chairman tomorrow before Fridays jobs report. It appears that the short term rally that we just saw is over. Gold got crushed today as well as the futures lost $35. The US dollar soared while short term rates went up and the longer term ones held steady. The XAU fell over 5 points and GDX lost almost 1 1/4. Volume was heavy. The short term indicators here have rolled over as well. My GDX March calls lost most of their value as I have held this trade for too long. Another mistake that could have and should have been avoided. The fundamental backdrop for gold is negative and I have no business trying the calls in that atmosphere. Yet I tried them anyway and even had a small profit at one point. We did see an oversold bounce for gold and the gold shares. That was my cue to exit the trade and I didn't. Mistakes are costly in the game and I just made another one. I'll sell and move on but the mental capital is always more important than the monetary capital. Two losing trades to start the new year is not where you want to be. Mentally I'm feeling negative as the GDX trade has blown up in my face. There's nobody to blame except myself. The highs are high and the lows are low in the trading game. The VIX was up today but remains short term oversold. It did manage to to stay below the 20 level. There's plenty of room to move up on the short term indicators. If that occurs we'll see quite a drop in the stock market. Hasn't happened yet and the VIX is still below its 50 day moving average so it's possible that today was just a one day decline. But a lot of the technical evidence is against that scenario. Asia was mixed and Europe lower overnight. My guess is that we'll see selling around the globe tonight. We'll see what tomorrow brings.