June 2009

Around 4:30 a.m., the E-Minis were in a modest short-squeeze, having recouped the seven-point loss they incurred during an earlier shakeout beneath Friday's lows. This strongly suggests DaSleazeballs are firmly in control, presumably capable of running the futures higher at will. Despite this, I wouldn't rely too heavily on the _____ rally target that pops out at the amateur pivoteer from the lesser charts.

Since Rick's Picks was launched nearly seven years ago as the successor to Black Box Forecasts, your editor has not taken a vacation lasting longer than a day or two.  Beginning on July 8, however, I will be gone for a full week so that I can enjoy a little summer with my family.  During my absence, two important additions will be implemented for your immediate benefit. The first will bring my mentor, Ira Tunik, into the forecasting loop.  If you are impressed with Hidden Pivots, just wait till you see what Ira brings to our bag of tricks. The literal payoff for subscribers will be in a beefed-up "Actionables" section.  Whither the Junior Miners? The second addition will be a weekly commentary from Chuck Cohen, one of the most knowledgeable investors I know in the precious metals world. Chuck is especially bullish on junior mining stocks, and that is where he will put his emphasis, including on specific plays in mining stocks and warrants.  His column will kick off on July 9 with a three-part series that will seek to explain why the bull market in bullion has yet to go ballistic.  Free Interactive Classes More immediately, beginning this morning, I will be offering free, hour-long remedial sessions for graduates of the Hidden Pivot course.  By limiting attendance to just a few students, the goal of these classes will be to provide an interactive forum in which seminar grads can receive a higher level of personal attention than is possible during the Wednesday morning sessions, which typically draw about 50 people.  Participation in these webinars will be by e-mail invitation, starting with May graduates and working backward in time.  See you in class!

From a friend who works in a local scientific lab comes word of the kind of economic stimulus that might have been better spent building, say, a truly world-class miniature golf course, or perhaps drilling for oil in the men's room of the county court house.  While either of these ventures might at least have created a few new jobs, the government has instead chosen to buy an MRI scanner for $1 million-plus and give it to a lab that has no budget to hire a technician to operate it. Our source notes that the lab already has an MRI machine and could urgently use some far less costly instruments, such as $50,000 spectrometers. But don't bother telling that to the feds, since they apparently are hell-bent on shoveling as much money as they can at high-tech factories that build super-pricey machines such as MRI scanners.   We've all heard stories about government waste, but in the days ahead, Americans had better brace themselves for stimulus stories so appalling they will make LBJ's mind-bogglingly wasteful Office of Economic Opportunity seem like the Manhattan Project in comparison. With the news media obsessing over each and every trivial sign of economic recovery, one could forget that The Government will continue to proffer tumbleweed and algae slime as long as it can pass them off as green shoots. This it does with the help of a credulous news media and a phalanx of vainglorious politicians more eager than ever in these hard times to assert that every dollar flowing into their respective congressional districts achieved nothing less than an economic miracle. All for the Tax Man In fact, like nearly all government spending, the huge sums that are being haphazardly poured into the maw of this Great Recession can only reward inefficiency and subsidize

Rick will be going on vacation soon and he has asked me to fill in with some suggestions as to touts and some other trading suggestions.   My trading system is one that has evolved over 40 years of trading the markets.  It is based upon Gann's measured move, some cycle work and an indicator that provides as assessment of pressure being applied to the various time frames.   It is the utilization of price action, time and pressure that should produce a successful result.   That is far as I am willing to go as to how the system works.  This is a test post and an introduction to what you will be seeing in the near future.  I will post a couple of ideas in the near future so that you can gather a little insight into my thought processes on how the markets work and what I think you can look forward to in the future.   good trading.  Ira.

As you can see in the chart, the futures hung up Friday but look like they are raring to go.  If they pull back to whatever, thenmn any rallky of at least six points.  To proceed with the test and add just a little bit of text before ewe drop a charert into htis fldaskf;ompabmrtpimaprtimptiaptikar. Upside poitential to ______.

An Ingenious Plan to Pay All Debts With the U.S. sinking hopelessly into a black hole of debt, and households facing an avalanche of tax hikes that will at best postpone the nation’s day of bankruptcy, we are all hard-pressed at this point to see a way to a happy ending. Lo, along comes an anonymous e-mail that describes a way to solve everyone’s debt problems painlessly. If you think the plan can work... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** Shorts Back Away, Letting Stocks Fall A few more days like yesterday, and bears could be pardoned for feeling a little cocky.  By simply keeping their cool Sunday night, they left DaBoyz with precious little buying power when stocks began to trade Monday morning. The result was a 200-point decline to start the week. That’s even worse than last Monday’s step-step-stumble out of the gate, which primed the Dow Industrials for a 187-point decline that day. The mood on Wall Street has definitely changed, and nowhere is this more evident than in the failure of the world-class... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** Lemmings Stoke Flight to ‘Quality’ It takes some getting used to whenever the phrase “flight to quality” pops up in print or on the business shows these days. Supposedly, that is what has been driving Treasury Bond prices sharply higher since June 11, when futures contracts on 30-Year U.S. Treasurys bottomed at 111^21. That equates to a yield of about 4.84 percent. Yesterday the same contract settled at 117^11, so eager were buyers, evidently, to lock in 30-year rates of... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** Even After Failures, Fed Fever Lingers The markets displayed disturbing symptoms of Fed-itis yesterday, spasming up and down even though the central

The rally begun on Tuesday from 13.595 looks like it will get to 14.255 before serious resistance impedes. We'd need to see a little better than that -- specificially, a print at 14.460 -- to be convinced this bull cyle has legs.

In night trading Thursday, Da Sleazeballs lacked the guts to push the futures above supply piled near 920 earlier in the week. In any case, a print today exceeding 924.25 would probably touch off a short-covering stampede that will carry into next week.

The futures looked prime for a thrust to _____ at yesterday's close, although, as noted in the chat room, there are doubts about the sausage-y nature of the price pattern yielding that target. Even so, the fact that all three price coordinates -- A, B and C -- are single-bar beauties seems reason enough to overlook the pattern's flaw and to simply go with appealing look of it.  If this analysis is correct, crucial resistance lies at _____, the target's midpoint sibling, and any pop above that number will be telegraphing a further rally of at least $14.