A huge gap lower at the open and the market never recovered from it. The Dow fell 256 points on good volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is now moving down but not with any conviction yet. The NASDAQ was the leader heading lower and that is not a plus. It wasn't a major head to the exits ahead of a long weekend though. The S&P 500 closed on the near term up trend line and its 200 day moving average. The short term indicators here are moving lower with room to go. My guess is that the S&P will hold up here but that will depend on what goes on over the weekend. There could be news that affects markets either way. On the sidelines with regards to the SPY options for now. Gold was up $64 on the futures and had a very strong week to the upside. The US dollar was lower as were interest rates. The XAU gained 4 1/3 and GDX was up around 1 1/3. Volume was a bit above average. The short term indicators for GDX are still moving up and are not yet short term overbought. This was yet another GDX call trade missed by me but I'm not sure chasing it here is the right thing to do. I could be wrong. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today but did finish well off of its highs for the session. The short term indicators here are moving up and are now at mid-range. I thought that the VIX would be moving lower here and that was wrong. Not sure what to expect next but the VIX is above the 20 level and more volatility would not be out of the question. I'll be going over the charts this weekend to try and come up with some type of game plan going forward. Plenty of time left in the June option cycle. Asia higher and Europe lower to close out the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.