A one day reversal to the downside as the market opened higher and closed lower. The Dow fell 143 points on light volume. The advance/declines were around 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving up. The economic data was mixed with retail sales coming in lighter than expected. Bank earnings were in line or better than anticipated but after a breif early rally in stocks, sellers took over. The market did however finish well off of the lows for the day though. The S&P 500 remains short term overbought. It's hard to make a case for trying anything with the SPY considerign there's only a week to go and no clear signal. If we do try anything it will have to be very short term in nature. However the short term trades are not really my strength so perhaps caution will be advised. Gold dropped $35 on the futures. The US dollar was higher along with interest rates. The XAU fell over 2 3/4, while GDX lost 3/4. Volume was good to the downside but the gold shares came back well off of their lows for the session. Still short term overbought here as well. Yes I'd still like to try the gold share calls but we are running out of time in the April option cycle. We'll consider what to do over the weekend. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and that doesn't fit with a down market. Not sure what the story is here. Still short term oversold which has been the persistent condition. Firmly below the 18 level now on the VIX with the RSI at 37. Maybe we'll get to 30 on the RSI next week but will there be enough time to try the SPY April put trade? The VIX still projects higher stock prices going forward. It was a positive week for stocks as all the major averages posted gains. The only caveat here is that the volume wasn't robust. We'll see if that means anything going forward. There are always many questions without easy answers in this game. We'll go over the charts in the next couple of days and try to come up with a game plan for a trade next week. Europe and Asia posted gains to close out the trading week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.