March 2009

I was conservative in my estimate Tuesday night and wound up raising it in the chat room to 748+. By day’s end, though, the futures had outbid me, putting in a high at 753.00. That left them in good shape to try for 771.75 today, or perhaps 778.00 at the very outside. Both are Hidden Pivots, but I wouldn’t suggest digging in your heels there just to prove a point. If the futures go just a tad higher than that today, exceeding 779.50, bears had better cover on the bell and repair to their fallout shelters over the weekend, since the short-squeeze could conceivably go nuclear. Note to Doc, Audrey et al: The equivalent targets for the June contract are, respectively, 769.00 and 774.25.

You just know how excited I get whenever this weasel wagon lunges toward $100. You could make a case that it’s headed for 112.31 this time, but we’ve learned over the years that it never gets quite high enough to gift us with the short sale of our dreams. I’m not going to pretend that we’ll be able to do so by way of a tout sent out the night before, however. No sirree, Goldman is far too cagey to yield up its treasure to every Tom Dick & Harry with the bright idea that a company in Goldman’s line of business shouldn’t be trading for more than a pittance. We’ll keep close tabs on the stock intraday, with an eye toward shorting it. My bias is strongly bullish because GS has somewhat exceeded the 92.55 midpoint sibling of the 112.31 target.

TBT was in the throes of such a pretty swan dive Wednesday night that I thought I’d take a stab at a target: 45.52. That’s  a Hidden Pivot target, and its accuracy would be affirmed by signs of hesitation at or very near 46.27, the midpoint pivot. I am not recommending aggressive bottom-fishing because the target coincides with Monday’s sideways consolidation. However, if the target is easily exceeded, that would be telegraphing more strength in the underlying bond futures. _______ UPDATE: My target caught the low of the day within 0.05 points.  Since the rally that followed was quite powerful — TBT surged 1.19 points, or 2.5%,  in the next 90 minutes — anyone trading this one could have had a pretty good day.

Yesterday’s tedious chop occurred after the futures had exceeded a peak at 723.75 recorded on March 4. The thrust created a robustly bullish impulse leg in the process, and so we should regard Wednedsay’s ups and downs as consolidation, perhaps for another strong leg up. That said, I don’t see any opportunities at the moment for night owls to catch a ride on the next northbound express. I am looking at a 15-minute chart (see insest) that shows an ABC-ish downtrend; however, like yesterday’s rally in Gold, the A-B impulse leg ends without having exceeded anything interesting to the left of it.  I’ll go out on a limb nonetheless with a prediction — that the futures will take a tradable bounce from 710.25.  This number — which is not a hula number — gets around the non-qualifying ‘B’ by using a one-off A. (Don’t ask.)  _______UPDATE: The expected bounce came in the wee hours off 911.25, a single point higher than anticipated. A little more than an hour into the session, a so-far gutless short squeeze had reached 732.00- but there was short-term potential to as high as 743.00 (later revised in the chat room to 748+).