A day of hanging around for the most part after yesterdays gains but the Dow did lose 273 points on good volume. The advance/declines were around 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is starting to trend sideways again. The NASDAQ posted a solid gain and the S&P 500 was barely lower. The S&P is still short term overbought but is possibly beginning to stall where it has to for the SPY put trade to work. My open order almost got filled today at the high of the session but didn't. I adjusted the order but the market began to sell off in the final hour. I'll try again on Monday to purchase the September SPY puts but it may be too late. We are close to getting a sell signal on one of our own indiators. I suppose we'll hope for some early strength on Monday and take it from there. Gold was up $8 on the futures. The US dollar was barely higher and interest rates rose. The XAU was off 3/4 and GDX finished flat. Volume was light. The technical picture on GDX hasn't changed. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX was barely higher today. It remains short term oversold but not completely. I'm back to not sure what comes next on this indicator. We made it through the inflation data this week and now it's on to the Fed. My guess is that it will be a sell the news event. Our game plan for now is to buy the SPY September puts on Monday if we get a chance to be filled at the premium that we're willing to risk. If not we will maybe try the SPY puts ahead of the Fed announcement on Wednesday. Plenty of charts to check over the weekend. Asia was higher and Europe little changed to close out the week. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.