Lower today to end the week as the Dow fell 453 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were better than 3 to 1 negative. The summation index is moving down. The jobs report was much weaker than expected and oil prices surged. That led to another huge gap lower at the open and the market tried to recover but could not. Once again the NASDAQ led things south. The S&P 500 had a steep loss and finally closed below the support of 6800. The trend now is down. The short term indicators here have turned lower with room to go before hitting oversold. Lower prices are now expected. Perhaps we'll see a big one day rally in order to try the SPY puts but that isn't the best trading strategy. Gold was up $83 on the futures. The US dollar was lower and interest rates finished flat. The XAU was off 2 1/4 and GDX shed 1/3. Volume was a bit above average. Gold up and the gold shares down is still the near term picture. The gold shares are following the overall market. GDX closed right on the up trend line that began in November as the 50 day moving average holds for now. I did leave my open order for the GDX March puts out there but will reconsider this idea over the weekend. I'm beginning to hear more talk now of gold falling in the media and we usually like to be contrary to what is being widely reported. Mentally I'm feeling a bit tired. The VIX jumped today and closed at 29 and change. The short term indicators here took off as well and some are now in overbought territory. In my view the decline that we've seen so far has been pretty orderly. The would change if the VIX continues to spike. There will be much work to do with the charts over the next two days to find a path forward. Not to mention being at the risk of the next major headline. I'll do what I can to try and figure things out. Asia was higher with the exception of India and Europe lower to finish out the week overseas. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.