Member-only content. Please Login or get a free trial of Rick's Picks to view.
COMMENTARY for Wednesday
TODAY'S ACTION for Wednesday
Rick's Picks for Wednesday
A 6.00 bid for two July 115-April 115 call spreads would have come all to easily the other day, so I’ll track and record the position for your further guidance. We were sleazed out of the further short sale of an additional April 115 call yesterday for 2.60, since someone stepped in front of us with an offer at 2.56, the high price of the day. No matter; we’ll try again, greedily raising the price to 3.80. If successful, we will have legged into a bullish ratio calendar-spread that will produce a profit over a very wide price range when the April calls expire. How wide? You can
In thin trading Tuesday night, by breaching the 913.90 Hidden Pivot midpoint of the pattern shown in the chart, the April contract has tripped a signal implying a fall to 886.70 is imminent. A bounce from near 907.20 is likely in any case, and if that bounce were to surpass at least two prior peaks on the 15-minute chart, we’d give bulls the temporary benefit of the doubt. However, the rally would need to touch 927.60 today to decisively reverse the now three-day slide.
After playing footsies with our rally targets for the last two days the futures caught a short-squeeze gust in the final minutes of yesterday’s session, stealing a few more points to create a 777.00 high. This created an impulse leg on the hourly chart that is subtle (see chart) but which should be understood by bears as a shot across the bow. Thefact that it happened on a Tuesday raises the prospect that the week could be especially memorable for anyone still short the averages at this point.
Anglogold, mentioned in today’s commentary, looks all but certain to reach a minimum 37.62 over the near term. That’s an 8.6% rally from here, and it would be a good place for long-term bulls to take some profits in anticipation of a pullback that would allow the replacement of any shares sold at a lower cost. A stall at 35.71 is likely enroute, but if it is short-livedd — say, two hours or less — that would be the go-ahead for completion of the expected move to 37.62.
The 49.62 target (if memory serves) disseminated in the chat room yesterday morning was exceeded by 20 cents – not quite enough for us to infer with confidence that the rally has breathed its last. The target stands to be significant from a short-term perspective, but if it is brushed aside within the next two days, look for the rally to continue to at least 51.47; and thence, to 53.26.
Member-only content. Please Login or get a free trial of Rick's Picks to view.
Member-only content. Please Login or get a free trial of Rick's Picks to view.
Take any dozen good reasons for being bearish right now and they still don’t equal the bullishness of the chart shown. The undeniably compelling rally objective is 13085, a 4.8% move from current levels, and one can only surmise that the dusting the 12158 midpoint received on the last pullback (12/28) all but clinched a finishing stroke to the higher number. Moreover, it implies that bears shouldn’t get their hopes too high even if, in the next few days, the Dow plummets 324 points to retest the midpoint support. As of now, that would signal not weakness, but a screaming opportunity to get long. Hard to believe, really, but that’s what the charts say.
Hidden Pivot Webinar & Tutorials
The next Hidden Pivot Webinar will be held on Feb. 29th - Mar. 1st. This two-day event is designed to teach you the risk-averse trading strategies Rick has taken to his seminars around the world. Once you have learned his proprietary secrets, you will approach trading and investing with enough confidence to make your own decisions without having to rely on the advice of others. For more information, or to register, click here.
A Trade We Like: Short Buffett, Long Paulson
by Rick Ackerman on March 18, 2009 3:00 am GMT · 3 comments
Since stocks started rallying a week ago, gold and silver futures have held up magnificently against a tide of silliness that has swelled on faintly improving perceptions of the economy. We should view the price of gold, above all, as a reality check on the global Carnivale, such as it is, but there will always be times when bullion’s cold, stern eye will be temporarily distracted by the irresistible hubris of a bear rally. Such as now. An unavoidable side effect of the current mini-mania for stocks has been the wild thrashing of precious metal quotes – or more recently, the tedious flatlining of quotes until some gratuitous spasm erupts for an hour or so just to scramble the players. But such histrionics make little sense to serious investors when bullion probes below $900; and so, with no rationale for going much lower, but no reason yet to blow the $1000 barrier to smithereens, gold will continue to seethe, waiting for the tide of silliness to recede.
And no one sounds sillier these days than our Fed Chairman, Helicopter Ben, who despite his nickname has tried everything except dropping $100 bills from the sky. With his factually empty talk about an end to the “recession” later in the year and a gradual recovery in 2010, he has begun to sound almost like Kudlow, CNBC’s all-purpose shill for anything that might cause » Read the full article