When it bounces back to $1250, the gold bugs will claim it's the resumption of the PM bull market. I'm always amazed at how the devout gold bugs (the types who consider Doug Casey to be a divinely inspired investing guru) refuse to even consider the possibility that gold will continue on its path down over the next year. They have transferred the idea of BTFD in stocks to BTFD in gold. It works until it doesn't, and it stopped working for gold a long time ago.

Although purely anecdotal, I have noticed an extreme reduction in traffic to retail stores where I live. I work in an area where you can find almost every retail store you might need, and the traffic has been noticeably lower this year. Even on Black Friday, Wal Mart was the only store with a decent amount of shoppers flocking to the door. When you can get what you need shipped to your door in two days, there's no need to risk being robbed in a parking lot or trampled by overzealous bargain hunters.

I have to say, you have nailed this call from the beginning, even early in the year when all of the gold bugs thought gold over $1500 EOY was a virtual certainty.

Gold tried to get below 1140 tonight. It just seems like too much of a falling knife given what the DXY is doing. And there is not much support below this level.

I put a VXX call spread on last week. There has been a 1.0 positive correlation between SPX and VXX for the last two days. I have to say, buying VXX options feels much better than buying SPY puts at the moment.

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then this is definitely insanity buying up here. But then again, maybe "this time is different."

And Harry Dent put out a 2nd updated edition of the Demographic Cliff just before releasing a new book this year called The Sale of a Lifetime. On the Futures Now show a few days ago he conceded that there could be an additional 10-20% upside for stocks before what he calls the "Great Reset." I'm now waiting for the 2nd edition of The Sale of a Lifetime to come out sometime in 2017...

It seems like an opportune time to put on portfolio protection with the $VIX so close to all time lows and the market at all time highs. I bought a few $VXX call spreads for next week just because the risk to reward seemed pretty good for a quick trade.

Kevin: you are a master of the written word. In addition to making finance articles fun to read, you have a gift for crafting compound-complex sentences!

The most insane thing I have seen just within the last few days is a number of permabears--some well known, some a bit more obscure--expressing more bullish stances. Even Harry Dent said on Futures Now that he thought there could be another 10-20% upside in the market before a "Great Reset" later in 2017. When Harry Dent, Marc Faber, etc. start getting bullish (or at least *less* bearish), I start to wonder if it's time to sell everything.