October begins with some selling as the Dow fell 173 points on average volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is still in a sideways configuration. Middle East tension and a huge dock strike in the US was the background for today. Are we too late for the SPY October puts? Hopefully not. The NASDAQ led the way down and that is not a plus for the bulls. The S&P 500 shed more than fifty points. The short term indicators there have turned down although they remain in overbought territory. I'm looking for some upside by Thursday but I could be wrong. Then there's the jobs report and market reaction on Friday to deal with. I am a believer that the SPY puts are the way to go here but now the premiums have moved up and they were already high with still over two weeks to go in the October option cycle. I'm going to be looking at probably buying some this week though. Gold was up $23 on the futures. The US dollar was higher and interest rates dipped. It looks like the flight to safety trades were popular today. The XAU rose 2 1/2, while GDX added 2/3. Volume was average. The short term indicators are now stalling for GDX so perhaps they won't make it back down to oversold. We'll see. I'll continue on the sidelines with regards to GDX for now. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX popped up today and at one point was above the 20 level. The short term indicators are moving higher and now imply more near term selling. This is why we may be too late on the index puts as the VIX is not going to wait around for us. It also closed back above its 50 day moving average. Never any easy trades in this game. Asia and Europe were mixed in last nights trade. We'll see how things go tomorrow.