Selling from the start today with a gap lower as buyers were nowhere to be found. The Dow lost 475 points on average volume. The advance/declines were around 5 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower. The NASDAQ led the way down today. Not sure exactly what is going on here but the market always knows more than we do. Geo-political tensions will probably be the excuse for todays drop. The S&P 500 is getting to short term oversold and is almost at its 50 day moving average. I thought that we would build on yesterdays rise but I was wrong. I suppose we should have taken our cues from the summation index but hindsight is usually correct. We keep moving on from here though with a week to go in the April option cycle. Pretty sure that we'll have to stay on the sidelines with regards to the SPY for now. Gold had a dramatic one day downside reversal as the futures fell a dozen after being up around $75. The XAU lost 2 1/2 and GDX shed almost 3/4. The gold shares were also much higher early on. Volume exploded as everybody here headed for the exits. The US dollar was higher and interest rates dipped in what looks like a flight to safety. All good things come to an end and this could be it to the upside for the gold shares and gold for now. However there is the short term up trend line for GDX that comes in at the 33 level. If we get down there on Monday I will be tempted to try the GDX April calls for a short term trade. Very risky though as we saw today just how fast markets can turn one way or the other. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX spiked higher but finished off of its highest levels for the day. The short term indicators here have now turned back up and are not yet overbought. I have not had a good handle on what the VIX has been implying lately. I'm not about to try and guess what will happen here next with the VIX. We'll keep an eye on it though. Quite an interesting session today for the markets. We'll have our work cut out for us when checking the charts over the weekend. There is something going on, we just don't know what it is. I'll be watching the weekend headlines a bit more closely. Europe was mixed and Asia lower with the exception of Japan to finish the trading week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.