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COMMENTARY for Thursday
TODAY'S ACTION for Thursday
Rick's Picks for Thursday
DaBoyz were playing their cards close to their vest Wednesday night after taking the futures down to within three ticks of an obvious Hidden Pivot target at 898.00 Night owls can try bottom-fishing with an 897.00 stop-loss, but you’ll be on your own if the order fills. At 898.00 the selling will have retraced 50% of this week’s rally, so a breach of the double support would hint of more weakness on Thursday. The opening will be unpredictable nonetheless, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see a down day begin with the illusion of firmness. _______ UPDATE (1:36 a.m.): 898.00 gave way, yielding a marginal low so far at 895.50. Bottom-fishing 898.00 with a 1.00-point stop-loss would not have worked, since the expected rally carried only 2.50 points from the 897.50 low — two ticks shy of the 3.00 points needed to trigger a tailing stop or partial-profit-taking.
Based on the pattern shown in the chart, the June contract looked like a good bet to push up to at least 944.50 a Hidden Pivot, but anything above it would indicate 948.10. If the higher number gives way, especially on a closing basis, we could look for yet another upstroke to finish the week. _______ UPDATE (12:37 p.m.): Gold has followed today’s forecast precisely so far, rallying to 944.00 overnight, then hitting 948.40 in a second push around mid-morning.
We could stretch for extra bases, since FAZ looks eager to probe a gap above yesterday’s high, but instead let’s play it conservatively, offering four June 10 calls short for 0.30 against the four October 10 calls we already hold for 1.20. Check back 30 minutes after the opening bell, since we may need to adjust on-the-fly. _______ UPDATE (10:25 a.m.): Live and learn, as they say. This vehicle is a chat room favorite, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it myself until we established a small position the other day. And now I know: FAZ is an unwinnable carny game controlled by some of the sleaziest operators in the business. We know this because of the way the June 10 calls that we tried to short this morning behaved when financial stocks opened on a phony gap-down. Ordinarily, option market-makers would have used this situation to rape buyers of June 10 calls on the opening by filling buy-at-the-market orders at the highest price possible. Instead, there evidently being no market orders or even any enthusiastic bids, the weasels fell over each other lowballing the offer, selling the calls in front of us at a price we could not match. The result is that the calls opened at 0.22 — not only far less than the 0.30 we had sought, but at a between-markets price that was out-of-bounds for retail customers. (The public can trade only in nickel increments except on spread orders.) Considering the foregoing, my recommendation is to scratch the October 10 calls on the current 1.20 bid. Note: I offered them for 1.25 myself, going between the 1.20/1.30 market reflected at the time, and was filled within five minutes.
The stock’s last thrust contained the kind of hidden power that creates buying opportunities. Specifically, the high at 144.86 exceeded two prior peaks — including an “external” at 142.00 from early October –but without getting past a more obvious September 19 high at 144.98 that the riff-raff would tend to use for a breakout signal. In short, we have camouflage here, and with it the prospect of entering with the uptrend once it resumes. This is too tricky to plot in advance, but stay tuned for updates, since it may be possible to board intraday.
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This Just In... for Thursday
Chrysler’s bankruptcy is much tougher on some dealers than we could have imagined. This letter to American Thinker.com describes the sad plight of a Dodge-Isuzu dealer in Florida who is about to lose everything.
Hidden Pivot Webinar & Tutorials
The next Hidden Pivot Webinar will be held on 6/30 - 7/1. 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 Moon-Shot Scenario in Gold
by Rick Ackerman on May 21, 2009 1:16 am GMT · 2 comments
(Although our long-term outlook for precious metals remains bullish, we doubt that gold is ready to leap beyond the $1000 barrier the next time it touches it — especially if this occurs within the next few weeks. However, with today’s commentary by our friend Chuck Cohen, we skip ahead to the not-so-distant future, when junior mining shares are likely to make dot-com mania seem relatively subdued in comparison. Below is Chuck’s rousing forecast for gold and gold stocks. RA)
Advice from Shaq, Canseco
Can you remember back in what seems now like ancient history–1998-2000, when making money in stocks seemed absurdly easy. Stocks only went up, some of them to ridiculous levels. Testimonies of instant millionaires were everywhere. CNBC was on in every barbershop. Even Shaq and Jose Canseco were dishing out advice. But then it was » Read the full article