Minor selling today as the Dow fell 243 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving lower. The Dow led things lower but that isn't the most bearish scenario. Both the NASDAQ and S&P 500 had small losses and came up from the lows of the session in the final hour. The short term indicators for the S&P have turned lower but are still overbought. During the day I adjusted up my stop loss order on the SPY October puts as the decline didn't have any steam in it and I did not want to book another loss. It got stopped out in the final hour for a 5% gain. We don't take the risks involved trading options for 5% gains but this trade was not working as I had thought it would. The entry wasn't all that good and neither was the exit. Might try this idea again but running out of time in the October option cycle. Yesterday I was thankful that we abandoned the GDX put idea. Today gold and the gold shares got crushed. The precious metal futures fell $82. The US dollar was higher and interest rates were up slightly. The XAU lost almost 13 points and GDX was off 3 1/2. Volume was heavy. The short term indicators for GDX have now rolled over with plenty of room to go. The near term up trend line comes in at just below 74. A break there will tell us that the party is over for the gold shares. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up slightly today. The short term indicators here are stalling at the mid-range level. Not sure what's next for the VIX. The Bollinger bands remain tight but that hasn't led to any big increase in volatility yet. Asia was generally higher and Europe generally lower overnight. We'll close out the week tomorrow.