We had a gap lower at the open and the market spent the rest of the day trying to make up the lost ground. The Dow rose 25 points on average volume. The advance/declines were positive. The summation index is moving down. Today seemed like a day of squaring positions on option expiration Friday. The technical picture hasn't changed. Oversold and staying that way. We will see a decent bounce on Monday or Tuesday in my humble opinion. What happens after that will determine how fast we make it down to 4200 on the S&P 500. 4200-4100 is where the next area of support lies for the S&P. My guess is that is where we are heading. We still like the SPY September puts at some point but we'd like to see some kind of relief rally to take the position. But markets rarely cooperate. Gold was up a few bucks on the futures. The US dollar was a bit lower along with interest rates. The XAU and GDX had fractional losses on light volume. I adjusted down my open order for the GDX September calls again. GDX is still a half a point away from our target of 27. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today as it fell back from its 200 day moving average. The short term indicators here are starting to roll over and it looks like at least a short term top has been put in for the VIX. That would fit in with our prognosis of some kind of bounce early next week. We'll see. Just rolling into the September option cycle so premiums will be high. We aren't looking for the beginning of a sustained rally but perhaps a snap back to the recent broken up trend line. That could set us up for the September puts. Might just be wishful thinking. We'll check the charts over the weekend as usual. Europe and Asia were lower to close out the week. It's Friday afternoon in the summer and time for a break.