Sellers have taken control as the Dow fell 593 points on very heavy volume. The advance/declines were 2 to 1 negative. The summation index is beginning to move lower. Not sure what's going on here but we cannot argue with price. Once again the NASDAQ led the way lower and that's a negative which it has been for a while. I was leaning towards the SPY calls but that thought was wrong. The short term indicators for the S&P are moving down and it closed below its 50 day moving average. The short term up trend line here has now been broken. Things could get ugly before they get better. Gold dropped $118 on the futures. The US dollar was higher and interest rates dropped in a flight to bonds. The gold shares got whacked. The XAU fell almost 25 points and GDX lost6 1/3. Volume remains heavy. It appears that the early week bounce for the gold shares is all that we are going to get, which makes it too late for the GDX February puts. Unless we see some kind of dramatic turnaround higher tomorrow in the precious metals. Some of the gold stocks have already lost over 20%. Looks like just another missed opportunity. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today and closed above the 20 level. Volatility has returned. The short term indicators here are now moving up with conviction and are almost short term overbought. Lower stock prices seem to be the future going forward. Perhaps we'll look for a bounce out of nowhere to try the SPY puts but it is most likely too late for that. We never got a clear signal for direction but the action of the market recently was puzzling. We now know it was a precursor to lower prices. Tomorrow should be interesting. Asia and Europe were genrally lower overnight. We'll close out the trading week tomorrow.