Back to the downside today as the Dow fell 669 points on very heavy volume. The advance/declines were better than 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is beginning to stall. The NASDAQ led that way lower and that continues to be a negative. The TRAN took a big drop today. The S&P 500 fell over 100 points. The short term indicators for the S&P 500 are moving lower with plenty of room to go. It appears that my idea of the S&P hitting a new all time high before option expiration was wrong. But we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow with the reaction to the inflation data. Gold got clobbered today as the futures lost $157. The US dollar was slightly higher and interest rates dropped. The XAU fell over 30 points and GDX lost 7 1/3. Volume was good to the downside. The short term indicators for GDX have turned back lower with room to go. GDX also closed on the low of the day. I decided not to wait until tomorrow and sold the GDX February puts during the trading session. Probably the wrong decision as they increased in value towards the end of the session. The entry on this trade was OK but could have been better. I'm probably a day early on the exit. It was only one session but the negative price action in gold and the gold shares reiterates my belief that we've seen the parabolic top for these segments. Not a great trade but the gain was 140% in a day. Mentally I'm feeling a bit frustrated as I did not execute the GDX put trade that well. Five days to go in the February option cycle so it is possible that we'll try something else here. A long weekend is coming though and it might be better to sit things out until Tuesday. The VIX jumped as you would expect and closed above the 20 level. The short term indicators here have turned back up with conviction. This implies that we could see more selling early tomorrow morning We'll see. It will probably all depend on the CPI report. Europe and Asia were generally lower overnight. We'll close out the week tomorrow.