A mixed bag to begin the trading week as the Dow fell 190 points on light volume. The advance/declines were 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving down. The NASDAQ posted a slight gain but that was about it for the bulls. The S&P 500 opened with a gap lower, fought its way back to positive territory and then rolled over again. It is short term oversold so some kind of bounce is expected. The S&P did finally make it to the 4200 level and that has held for now. I still believe that the market will hold up here but I could be wrong. If we continue to drop here while being oversold it could get ugly. However I'm not keen on that scenario right now. We'll look for some kind of bounce and go from there. Gold fell ten bucks on the futures. The US dollar was lower along with interest rates. Those are usually positives for the price of gold. The XAU and GDX had fractional losses on light volume. They both finished up from the worst levels on the day. I already have an open order in for the GDX November calls. It will take a decline in GDX to get filled so it may have to be adjusted at some point. I still think that the geo-political tension in the Middle East has legs and that the flight to safety trade is not dead yet. That said, GDX is still short term overbought but can stay that way during rallies. What we don't want to do here is think that just because there was a successful trade in GDX last option cycle that things will simply repeat in this option cycle. Not to mention it took a war breaking out to bring the gold shares to life. However the longer term down trend line for GDX was broken and higher prices should be expected after perhaps a pause to digest the gains. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was lower today and that doesn't exactly fit with an overall negative market. However the VIX is short term overbought and the indicators turned lower today. Still above the 20 level. There is a short term up trend line at the 18 level that we'll be keeping an eye on. If the VIX can break below 18 there's a better chance that the decline has run its course. Some economic data due this week including GDP and inflation numbers. But it remains a headline risk environment. Asia was lower and Europe generally higher to start the week. We'll keep an eye on tonights developments.