A full fledged retreat today as the Dow fell 373 points on light volume. The advance/declines were around 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving down. Not yet at the zero line here but on the way and we know what that means. Things could just fall apart. Hasn't happened yet and there's time to turn things around but I don't know what will. So much for my assumption that today would simply be a waiting game. Not sure exactly what's going on here but the market knows all. The NASDAQ led the way lower and that's a negative. We made it back to the 50 day moving average on the S&P 500 and quickly headed south. The option premiums on the SPY September puts were more than we wanted to pay for them even being far out of the money. The short term indicators here have now turned back down. The daily candlestick chart for the S&P has a bearish engulfing pattern now. So it appears that we are heading lower and may take out the recent lows. We'll see what happens after the Fed speech tomorrow. Gold was off a few bucks on the futures. The US dollar was higher and interest rates were up a touch. The XAU and GDX had fractional losses on light volume. The gold shares seem to be holding in there despite todays stock market losses. I re-entered my order for the GDX September calls. Not exactly sure this is the right idea here but we'll see what happens. If the overall market does tank the gold shares will probably go along for the ride. We'll keep a close eye on it. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX turned back up and so did its short term indicators. The daily candlestick chart here has a bullish engulfing pattern implying higher prices for the VIX going forward which would imply more volatility. It is still below the 200 day moving average though and the important 20 level. The short term indicators here are still close to mid-range. Interesting times as we enter late summer. Asia up and Europe down in last nights trading action. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.