Stocks got slaughtered today and only a last hour bounce kept it from being worse. The Dow fell 572 points on heavy volume. The advance/declines were negative. The summation index is still moving higher. It broke out to the upside from the upwards sloping channel yesterday which normally would be bullish. But it seems that these are not normal times for the technical indicators as I've mentioned before. I should have heeded my own advice and moved to the sidelines. The NASDAQ led the way down and lost almost 3%. The S&P 500 fell over 1 3/4%. The short term indicators there are heading down and still have room to go. The S&P is now at the lower range of the sideways channel that it has been in since the beginning of August. The weekly indicators are moving lower and have reached the mid-range level. There is a longer term up trend line that comes in around the 7400 level on the weekly chart for the S&P. Are we heading there? Gold got crushed as the futures lost $140 to close well below the 4000 level. The US dollar was slightly lower along with interest rates. The XAU lost over 18 and GDX slid 4 1/4. Volume was heavy to the downside. The short term indicators on GDX are heading lower and not quite yet oversold. GDX has clearly broken down out of the channel it was in since the beginning of September. The potential inverse head and shoulders pattern that I alluded to earlier on the weekly chart has now been negated. The weekly indicators for GDX are still moving lower and are not yet completely oversold. GLD hit a new 52 week low. Gold never saw any haven bid and is perhaps being sold now to cover margin calls. My GDX November calls are dead no matter how much time is left because they are now too far out of the money. Maybe if we see a bounce before option expiration I can cut the loss to 75% which would be considered a win at this point. Mentally I'm feeling OK. The VIX was up today and at one point traded well above the 20 level. It dropped back to close below there. The short term indicators here are now moving up and it closed above its 200 day moving average. It looks like the message here is to expect more volatility in the near term. Quite a day to end the month of October. Still three weeks to go in the November option cycle. I'll be checking the charts over the weekend as usual since volatility can create some decent trading opportunities if you can find them. Asia was mixed and Europe down with the exception of the FTSE to close out the week and month. It's Friday afternoon and time for a break.