March 2009

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

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

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 the benighted Hopeful to turn on, tune in and permanently suspend disbelief. What will it take  to send Bernanke back into his bomb shelter?  We can see a few inevitabilities that might do the trick: a complete meltdown of the global insurance business; the collapse of New York City real estate; and/or yet another swan dive by the Dow Industrials. In the meantime, it will remain largely  unappreciated by Bernanke, and by nearly everyone else, that it is not the recent emergence of hopefulness that has caused stocks to rise, but rather the reverse -- i.e., a purely technical rally has caused false hopes to

Reports that Atlantic City’s casino’s are in serious trouble don’t tell the half of it, according to our source. He reports as follows: “It's really a lot worse then the news stories would suggest. I have upper management contacts inside a few halls, and they've told me the published numbers are really the best face they could muster. In reality, Atlantic City is toast if this continues much longer. The Recession is keeping people near home in Pennsylvania, and with new slot-shops opening nearby, they won't be back. Atlantic City fumbled the ball badly. I blame the state and city government for allowing a few big operators to destroy the rest of the town. Now they're talking about how they need main street attractions to bring back the tourists, but most everyone closed or sold their family businesses and left long ago. Why would anyone come to this town ? It looks worse then it did in the 70's -- nothing but massage parlors, gold shops and cheap ethnic restaurants ( it looks like Tijuana in the 1960s ). And to top it all off, you can't even see the ocean from the Boardwalk anymore. They might as well have built everything back on the marshes."

One of my trading partners, John Boutiette of Bluefin Financial LLC, will demonstrate some of the ways in which he combines Hidden Pivots and pitchfork median lines to achieve consistent trading results. The webinar will take place on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. EDT and will be open to all Rick's Picks subscribers, although it will be helpful if you've attended either the Hidden Seminar or Tim Morge's class.  You can register at this URL:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/850003717

The multiyear high achieved two weeks ago came within 0.64 points of a rally target more than five months in coming, so we should be alert to the possibility that an important top is in. The pullback has already generated several bearish impulse legs on the hourly chart and a couple of patterns that have

've been beating the drums for a push up to 112, but Goldman (GS) flunked the strength test yesterday -- miserably -- when it failed by a relatively small amount to surpass a look-to-the-left peak at 102.71 recorded last October. If the rally

The futures retreated sharply after topping less than two points above the 769.00 target identified here earlier. Are they now about to plunge to the 702.00, a possibility raised in yesterday's tout?

A bout of weakness today would likely bring the futures down to 907.70, a Hidden Pivot that's not worth bottom fishing because of its close proximity to a visually obvious low recorded last Thursday. Its midpoint sibling lies at 916.50, but that number