Crude began to slowly work higher overnight as the battle between the US and Iran continues in a stop and start fashion with the one constant being that not much is getting through the straits. Making things even more entertaining, the SPR is pretty much empty at this point.

Yields also notably surged overnight with crude.

The S&Ps opened down about half a percent, and after a brief attempt at a rally despite the ISM coming in a touch weaker than the consensus at 54.6 and the JOLTS data being roughly inline.

That rally then fell apart around mid-morning, we rolled over and eventually slumped to a new lows for the day in the afternoon with a loss of about a percent as crude broke out of its compression triangle on the charts and popped about 5%. Like I said yesterday, blastoff time?

A bounce appeared in the final hour to lift the S&Ps back to roughly the open, but we still went out with a loss of a little over half a percent and made a new low for the move since the high. Needless to say, the equity market looks like it might be in for a decent slide if the June and JULY highs fail to provide support for the S&Ps, which we tested today.

The dollar was a little firmer once again, with the DXY gaining a touch and pushing back to Friday's high for the move. Yields popped to new highs all across the curve, which flattened once again, and it's important to note that yields overseas made new highs too.

Commodities were mostly lower, but crude did he heavy lifting with its 5% pop and pushed the DJP BBERG commodity ETN to a new 52-week high.

Gold slumped overnight and eventually tumbled to as low as $4327 shortly after the US open. Following a bounce back up to around $4375, the metal rolled over again in the afternoon to eventually slide to a marginal new low at the close and went out pretty much on the lows of the day with a loss of nearly 3 percent to $4328 and a new low for the slide that began last week.

Silver similarly tumbled overnight, and following a bounce like with gold, it tumbled again in the afternoon to make new lows for the day and went out pretty much on the lows at $64 for a loss of nearly 4 percent.

The GDX gapped down on the open to around the 20 dma and then rebounded all the way back up to nearly the unchanged mark before rolling over again with the metals and S&Ps to go out back on the lows of the day with a loss of 4 percent.

Gold, silver, and the GDX are all well below their 5 dma, which leaves the bears in charge, although today's decline produced inverted hammers in GLD, SLV, and GDX, which when combined with some bullish divergences on the hourly charts and the extended nature of the decline over the past 3 days could be the recipe for a big bounce tomorrow. However, there is no guarantee of such a bounce.

I still think we're headed lower into Friday's jobs data, but a bounce tomorrow to check back to the 5 dma in gold, silver, and GDX would make sense given the setup. If such a rally does appear, I think it's likely a sale, but let's see if it even appears first.

My gold model remained at neutral.

Positions: Short SPY, QQQ, MDY, and IWM. Long DBA, IBIT, and STRC

Metals: I bought some SLV 59 calls for tomorrow near the close for 19 cents given the setup for a bounce that I alluded to above.