March 2008

We’ve taken Larry Kudlow, Abbey Cohen, and a few other self-aggrandizing liars to task in the past for trying to spin pretty much everything as bullish, but that was before we’d heard from Barr Segal, a managing director at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc. On a 1 to 100 bozo scale, this guy is off-the-charts. When you read the quote attributed to him, you’ll understand why the firm that employs Segal has put him in charge of managing $80 billion in fixed assets.

Keep in mind that even though the Fed has thrown a trillion dollars at the ’subprime mess’ since August and cut rates by 3 percentage points, things have only gotten worse for the banking industry. In fact, since these desperate efforts began, the difference between what banks and the government pay to borrow money for three months has doubled to 1.92 percentage points. An RTC-type structure has been suggested by Pimco’s Bill Gross to help lenders push trillions of dollars worth of dubious mortgage paper onto taxpayers, a plan that would be just peachy as far as Barr Segal is concerned. Here’s the quote from him, and let’s hope he’s out of town when the torch mob comes calling:

‘An RTC-type structure is interesting, and it may not be that much of a burden on taxpayers in the long run,” said Segal. The government should purchase the mortgages and reissue ‘debt that’s backed by the U.S. government — and there you go, you’ve unclogged the drain.”

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Captured in a headline in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, here’s a snapshot of California barreling down the road to ruin: ‘Gas Tax Revenue Windfall for State.’ And here’s the sub-head: ‘Lawmakers eager for help balancing budget’. Talk about man’s inhumanity to man! With the state looking at an $8 billion deficit, the pols evidently think that recouping a big chunk of it through higher gas prices is a great way to go ‘ their idea of a victimless tax. Supposedly, if gasoline, now averaging $3.63 in the Sunshine State, hits $4 a gallon, it will add $1.2 billion to the $3.8 billion that state and local governments are already extorting from motorists at the pump. The reporter who wrote this story, one Matthew Yi, of the Chronicle’s Sacramento bureau, seems as tone deaf to its implications as the politicians who evidently have been drooling over the prospect of all those ‘windfall’ dollars finding their way into the state’s coffers.

Here’s a little more from Mr. Yii ‘ a transition paragraph that he undoubtedly believes is editorially neutral: ‘[The extra revenues] would bring some welcome relief to the state’s revenue picture, which has been bleak in recent months as the meltdown in the housing market became a drag on the Golden State’s economy.’ Now, you may have to read that sentences a couple of times before you fully understand what it says ‘ that taxing fuel until motorists cry ‘Uncle!’ is somehow going to help California’s ‘revenue picture.’ If that were true, then why not levy a $500 tax on each and every patient admitted to a hospital emergency room? That’s a tax that would be especially hard to avoid ‘ plus, wouldn’t the lion’s share be paid by greedy insurance companies that are swimming in unconscionable profits anyway?

The Last Boom

This story is of a piece with a plan favored by New Jersey Gov. Corzine that would seek to balance the state’s woeful books by raising tolls on the Garden State Parkway and the Turnpike. Is anyone paying attention to this stuff? Government employment is one of the few areas where the economy can still be described as booming, and without it payroll numbers for the last few months would have looked even more dismal than they were. However, like retail sales figures that have been inflated by higher gasoline prices, when you peel away the statistical veneer, all that’s left are trends that are draining the last ounce of blood from the economy.

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Most news outlets reported that investors were ‘cheered’ by the Fed’s most recent rate-cut, but we know better. For it was nothing even remotely resembling cheer that pushed the Dow Industrials into a spectacular, 420-point surge last week, and into 200- and 300-point rallies since then; rather, it was the unmitigated panic of bears who had bet that stocks would fall. This dynamic is called short-covering, and we would be very surprised if those two words combined have ever been uttered by a network news anchor. Despite this, we have always maintained that short-covering is the basic fuel not only of bull markets, but of breathtaking bear rallies such as have been occurring almost weekly of late. Mere optimists are incapable of such buying stampedes, even when the business pages are filled with the kind of news that brightens investors’ spirits. No, it is only bears who get caught in the ringer who can muster the kind of urgency it requires to push the broad averages past heavy supply and above prior peaks.

Pack Journalism

Are the news reports that describe this action as ‘bullish’ therefore wrong? Yes, we would argue. Moreover, the inability of mainstream commentators to tell it like it is represents a key difference between major news outlets and the not-yet-ready-for-prime-time world of newsletters such as this one. Having been a newspaper reporter myself for seven years, I can empathize with the tendency of journalists to report the obvious at the expense of the truth. As a fledgling reporter, I learned this the hard way covering a campaign ‘coffee klatch’ for a powerful New Jersey politician at the home of a black ward-heeler in Atlantic City. She had baked a cake because it was his birthday, but he was so eager to move on to the next whistle-stop that he left without even realizing the cake was there in the living room, waiting for him to blow out the candles. The politician, Frank S. ‘Hap’ Farley, ultimately lost the election, along with the seat he’d held in the New Jersey Senate for 40 years, probably because he’d grown out of touch with ‘the little people.’ The cake episode would have illustrated this perfectly, but, facing a deadline in an hour, I simply recapitulated for the edification of my readers the vacuous five-minute speech he gave at this event.

Behind the Headlines

Pack journalism is manifestly unsuited to revealing the sometimes subtle nuances of truth that lie behind the events of the day. It is assembly-line writing, really, and readers and TV viewers have been conditioned to imbibe their daily dose of news in sound bites and shorthand. If you want to know what is really going on, you’ll need to tune to the op-ed page and to specialized newsletters whose job is to make sense of the stories behind the headlines. However, we suspect that many who merely scan the headlines understand that a 400-point rally in the Dow is no more an indication of the economy’s good health than the routine assurances we receive on this topic from Mssrs. Bernanke, Paulson et al.

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Before discussing the imploding condo market and how it could ultimately bring down the nation’s regional banks, let me digress for a moment to a kinder, gentler story that began this evening with the hankering I had for a corned beef sandwich. My wife, Marilyn, had prepared the corned beef Irish-style on St. Paddy’s Day, with the traditional side of cabbage, but I wanted the leftovers Jewish-style ‘ i.e., on rye bread with cole slaw and Russian dressing. Having none of these ingredients in the house, I drove to the Safeway, only to find the deli counter closed. There was a guy mopping the floor behind the cold cuts display, but he looked too busy to be bothered. With just minutes remaining before the evening shift ended, he was probably eager to finish his work and go home for the holiday weekend. At that point, the last thing in the world he wanted to hear was a request for some deli item that had been put in storage for the night.

As I started toward the exit, resigned to having my sandwich on white bread with mustard, he called out, ‘Sir, is there anything I can do to help you?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied.
‘Do you have any packaged cole slaw?’ ‘Yes, I’m sure we do,’ he said helpfully. ‘I’ll show you where it is.’ Mitch ‘ that was the name on his badge — walked me over to a refrigerated display, where he searched high and low for the cole slaw. ‘Must be sold out,’ he said. ‘But that’s no problem.’ He walked back behind the deli counter, opened the cold storage locker and returned with a vat of cole slaw. From this vessel he scooped a small amount into a half-pint container, then asked if there was anything else he could do for me. ‘Just point me toward the rye bread,’ I replied. On the way out of the store, I told the manager how Mitch had gone out of his way to help me. The manager said it wasn’t the first time he’d heard good things about Mitch. Nor, undoubtedly, will it be the last.

Condo Glut Across U.S.

Now about those condos. The Wall Street Journal recently lit upon this latest problem in the real estate sector with a front-page story headlined ‘Woes in Condo Market Build As New Supply Floods Cities.’ Incredible as it may sound, condo developers are still going full-bore in such places as Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and San Diego. This, despite the fact that the condo market is already glutted worse than anyone can recall. At the end of 2007, there was a ten-month supply ‘ the biggest backlog since the National Association of Realtors began compiling the data in 1999. We’ll let the Journal explain how developers could have been so stupid. ‘It may seem surprising that anyone would want to add supply to a market whose troubles have been well-publicized for many months,’ the article noted. ‘But the economics of condo building encourage developers to bring half-finished projects to completion, even when prices and demand are plunging.’

So be it. But the newspaper saw a possible bright side — fire-sale prices that are likely to attract the interest of vultures. If so, that would be a blessing for the regional banks that typically are the main lenders for these types of projects. But the Journal overlooked one aspect of the problem that we see as a relative bright spot. How big would you guess this crisis is? The answer is: a mere $42 billion. Peanuts, really. That is the total amount of condo-related debt on lenders’ books. Compared to the hit investors are about to take on Bear Stearns alone, a measly $42 billion problem is barely worth reporting on the front page. However, what if a few defaults were to take down some relatively small banks, triggering a domino effect? It’s not hard to see how a $42 billion cherry bomb could turn into a stick of dynamite practically overnight. Recall that when Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Citi first acknowledged their difficulties, they did so by reporting quarterly losses in the $4 billion to $6 billion range. But it didn’t take long for those numbers to triple or worse, and we expect that to happen again if the condo crisis is allowed to run its course.

This seems like a problem the Fed could nip in the bud, and for mere chump change. Why should bankers be the only businessmen who get bailed out. It’s not as though condo developers don’t have feelings too. Do they not bleed when you prick them? Do their bunions not swell when they wear new shoes? We take up their cause, before it’s too late, with the rally cry, ‘Save The Donald!’

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Although we wrote up Tuesday’s ballistic rally as little more than a meaningless gusher of mass hysteria, most of it short-covering, we were still surprised at how quickly it receded back into near-nothingness. Nearly two-thirds of the Dow Industrials’ gains vanished with yesterday’s 293-point decline, providing fresh evidence that investors are not nearly so ebullient as the nightly news commentators would have us believe. However, it was not the cascade in stocks that deserves comment, but rather the across-the-board selloff in commodity markets. Gold was down $58, ending a six-day winning streak that took quotes above $1000 for the first time, and the price of a barrel of crude fell by nearly 5%, to $104.48. Some of the agricultural contracts were limit-down, retracing parabolic spikes at the same steep pitch as the rallies that had created them.

Some saw the collapse in commodities as signaling a reversal of the dollar’s long slide. If so, we lack the imagination to see how this trend could persist for more than a few days. Someone in the Rick’s Picks chat room mentioned that he’d never seen sentiment swing so heavily against any investable as it has against the dollar. We wouldn’t argue otherwise, since it is true that the dollar has few friends in the world right now, and almost no one expects it to turn around any time soon. But there are good reasons for its pariah status, and they seem likely to persist for the foreseeable future. We note that ‘Helicopter Ben’ Bernanke has lived up to his nickname, and nothing he has said or done in the last six months would suggest that the value of the dollar is much of a concern to officialdom. Treasury’s Paulson mentioned the need for a strong dollar in a speech he gave the other day, but considering the context, it was probably just a slip of the tongue

‘Long Squeeze’

But to infer that overwhelmingly bearish sentiment alone could cause the dollar to rally is to ignore certain realities of the marketplace. The implication is that large short positions that have been constructed against the dollar by leverageurs could be squeezed, sending the greenback soaring in relationship to other currencies. But dollars are not like stocks that sometimes get short-squeezed when demand spikes precipitously into limited supply. In fact, the amount of dollar-denominated assets in search of bidders these days is practically unlimited. Under the circumstances, it is a continuation of the ‘long-squeeze’ on a manifestly doomed dollar that we should expect, not panic-induced short-covering. Sure, the buck is long overdue for one of those ten-percent rallies that is supposed to prove that nothing of value rises or falls in a straight line. But he who says the dollar must rally much more than that should be made to say why.

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Seminar for Night Owls

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

The second epic short-squeeze in a little more than a week has sent bears a clear message: If you want to get rich betting on the sure thing, you had better be prepared to die trying. The Dow Industrials popped for a 420-point gain yesterday, driven as always by hysterical short-covering. Compounding the bears’ shock and awe was the fact that the catalyst for this latest rally was a news announcement that should have disappointed investors. A 100-basis-point easing had been all but ordained by the bond markets, but the actual cut came in at 75 basis points. Rather than plunging in despair, however, stocks sold off only moderately in the gratuitous gyrations that followed. Bears need only have looked in a mirror to see what was holding stocks up.

So why is shorting this market a ’sure thing’? We’ve cited a growing list of reasons and now note that even the relative optimists have conceded that the most important of those reasons, the ongoing real estate collapse, is looking more and more like a 1930s-style dreadnought. Adding to the gloom is that no seems able to imagine a decisive end to it, only the suspiciously vague prospect of an economic rebound ‘in the second half.’ There is also abundant statistical evidence of deepening recession, plus a string of would-be bank failures that have been growing more colossal by the week. As for that vast army of bozos who have always believed that the Fed ‘would never let it happen,’ evidence grows that the crisis is bigger not only than the Federal Reserve, but much bigger, even, than all of the central banks acting in concert to try and stop it. Uncle Sam alone has thrown a trillion dollars at the problem so far, manifestly failing to restore confidence in the financial system.

The Last Bear

Meanwhile, these psychotic, 400-point rallies in the Dow do not augur renewed confidence. They are being driven almost entirely by short-covering, and even the otherwise clueless news anchors are starting to dismiss them as meaningless. One of these days, moments after the last surviving bear’s short position has been liquidated, stocks are going to fall so steeply that even the Plunge Protection Team will call for back-up. Then, the financial collapse that so many have been expecting will unfold in just a few days, with enough power to leave the global economy in ruins for a generation.

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

It would have taken some imagination to foresee that just about every asset class save stocks would get hit yesterday. Although the Dow Industrials, for one, began the day 200 points in the hole, the blue chip average went no lower intraday, and it ultimately settled 21 points above Friday’s close. In retrospect, no one should have been too surprised that U.S. stocks bucked a global fire sale, since they’d already been sold to the point of exhaustion Sunday night in futures markets around the world. That might not sound very auspicious, but we cannot recall a single instance when punitive selling begun on a Sunday night carried into the NYSE opening on Monday. Some may recall that the 1987 Crash occurred on a Monday, but that was before index futures were traded around-the-clock. Had that been the case back then, we have little doubt that the worst of the selling would have been over before dawn on Monday, and that the short-squeeze that brought the stock market roaring back the next day would have occurred a day earlier, sparing investor’s the agony of Black Monday.

(Click on image to enlarge, if you dare)

On Monday, commodities in particularly got knocked for a loop, presumably because they were so very overbought. Crude plummeted more than $8 from its highs, palladium was off nearly 10 percent, and the softs — wheat, corn and soybeans leading the way  ‘ got pummeled. Gold was a notable exception, ending the day about even with Friday’s settlement price after being up more than $30 overnight. Treasurys rose moderately, with future contracts on the Ten-Year Note and 30-Year Bond up about � of a point ‘ hardly enough to suggest that a flight to safety was on many investors’ minds. It felt more like liquidations by financial players who may have gotten on the ropes as portfolio values fell below margin thresholds.

On the Ropes

Nor do we think the selling is over, even if short-covering in the wake of Sunday’s manipulated washout prevented stocks from crashing. There could even be some high drama later in the week, not just because of today’s Fed meeting, but because three-day weekends such as the one that will begin on Good Friday traditionally provide investors with an extra opportunity to lose their cool, such as it is. Also, March stock options will cease to trade after Thursday, and that could easily exacerbate whatever nervousness develops as the week wears on. Whatever happens, precise targets that we have disseminated to subscribers imply that shares remain very vulnerable to a selling avalanche.

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You Can Take the Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, when the class has typically been held. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Would you have preferred to go home long at the close on Friday, or short? That’s a question we frequently ask in the Rick’s Picks chat room toward the end of the trading day ‘ a little game we play to position ourselves for the next day, in true contrarian fashion, against whatever strategy feels most comfortable. If we have succeeded, we will have placed ourselves, psychologically speaking, squarely in harm’s way. We do so knowing that the only possible buyers of shares these days — other than Kudlow and friends, of course — are bears covering short positions suddenly turned painful. It therefore follows that if bears seemed mellow and complacent at Friday’s close, we should have wanted to load up on stocks, since any news over the weekend that might cheer investors even slightly would be likely to touch off a short-covering tizzy come Monday morning. However, if bears seemed fearful, running up share price in the final minutes, then we should have wanted to go home short up the wazoo.

(Click on chart to enlarge)

Truth to tell, we had trouble discerning a psychological ‘comfort zone’ to trade against Friday afternoon. Although the Dow finished down nearly 200 points, that was 120 points off the lows, and there were no clear signs of panic by either bulls or bears as their respective opportunities to freak out dwindled in the final hour. If it had been a game of chicken, both drivers probably would have been content to go over the cliff.

Hell Week

With no signs of craziness to guide us, we found ourselves weighing the facts, dismal as they are, and concluding that stocks are far more likely to go plummeting into the bowels of Hell next week than to continue acting as though we’ll somehow get through this mess together. Although Optimism is still the official line from the likes of Mssrs. Paulson and Bush (although no longer from a seemingly chastened and gimlet-eyed Mr. Bernanke), it is sounding more and more strained each time the Fed announces yet another extraordinary measure to keep this or that financial disaster from snowballing.

On Friday it was troubles at Bear Stearns (which, by the way, was a short recommendation in Rick’s Picks Thursday night, albeit an extremely difficult one to execute). Bear, as you may recall, was among the first blue chip financial firms to acknowledge significant balance-sheet problems a few months ago. The company’s troubles did not appear to be of the unmitigated sort at the time, at least not to those who have been getting their news from CBS, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, but they have clearly become so since. As much became evident on Friday, when J.P. Morgan, under the Fed’s spin-control aegis, purported to ride to Bear’s rescue. There were rumors that Citigroup could be the next big ’surprise,’ but will any of us be truly surprised if it turns out that Citi’s still metastasizing troubles are fundamentally as serious as Bear Stearns’ ?

$1 Trillion Blown

What would surprise is if there were any signs whatsoever that the Fed’s and U.S Government’s increasingly frequent and drastic interventions, each bigger than the last, were starting to work. But that is not even remotely the case. In fact, since August, when the real estate sector began to turn ugly, the Federal government has doled out nearly $1 trillion in direct and indirect support to the credit markets in a so-far failed attempt to unfreeze them. Does anyone seriously believe at this point that more funny money bestowed by the Fed on bankrupt businesses is going to restore the confidence of investors, lenders and consumers?

Ordinarily we would acknowledge that the central bank will always have another card up its sleeve. But with last week’s new-lamps-for-old ploy to swap Treasurys for subprime rejectimenta, the Fed laid all of its card on the table. Sure, they could buy every home in America to ‘cure’ real estate deflation. But before you start believing that this, or any other nostrum yet to come, is going to work, keep one thing in mind: Neither the Federal Reserve nor the Federal government has two nickels to rub together that do not come, ultimately, from taxpayers. And also this: We — meaning you and I — are already on the hook for a trillion dollars’ (and counting) worth of rescue money and pledges, much or most of it deployed in companies that a prudent investor wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. That is $3,300 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., and every penny of it will have to be repaid by someone.

Meanwhile, with the Dow Industrials currently trading a mere 15% below their all-time highs, does anyone besides us judge Wall Street, and investors in general, to be a tad out of touch with reality?

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Take the Seminar at Night..

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.

Overly bearish sentiment has put us temporarily in the bulls’ camp, but we part company with the those who evidently are gearing for a powerful rally that lasts into summer or longer. You can’t blame stock brokers, and analysts and CNBC shills for trying to spin things that way, since they can point to Tuesday’s monster rally in the Dow as evidence that the worst is behind us. They may be right, but so might people who believe in alien abductions, Tinkerbell, and OJ’s search for the real killers. Frankly, we’ve always thought the stock market’s vaunted prescience was over-rated and that nascent bull markets do not so much predict economic recoveries as engender them by turning psychology bullish at cyclically ordained intervals.

(Click on chart to enlarge)

But if a new bull market has indeed begun, it has gotten off to a weak start. Notice in the chart above that the 400-point rally earlier this week, powerful as it may have seemed, did not surpass even a single important prior peak on the hourly chart. Although that modest feat would have required only a further 46 points’ worth of jubilation, in our Hidden Pivot playbook book a miss is as good as a mile. In this case the shortfall was more than slight, however, since we require rallies to pass not one, but two prior peaks to create the kind of impulse legs that typically precede extended bull moves. It would have taken 92 points more upside to achieve that on Tuesday, but the fact that not even one important high was surpassed is reason enough to infer that this bull lacks real guts. That said, in the coming weeks the broad averages will need to act at least moderately buoyant to turn sentiment back to bullish. We’ll be watching this indicator closely, since we don’t think it will take much of a shift to set up the next killer bear wave.

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April Seminar at Night

There’s good news if you’ve wanted to take the Hidden Pivot course but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings. In mid-April, I’ll be conducting the six-hour class over two consecutive evenings ‘ Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT. Click here, and then on the ‘Upcoming’ tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.