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January 2010
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It looks like there is still more damage to be done, and I therefore suggest using a Hidden Pivot support at 567.71 as a minimum downside objective, or 563.64 if any lower. If the latter number is reached, the correction from early January’s high at 629.51 will have been a tad more than 10 percent.
The three-tick stop-loss I advised on longs from 18.415 would have ejected you from the trade on the exact low of the day. If you compensated for my chimp-like foolishness with a little brains and a slightly wider stop-loss, congratulations, since the ride from the low has been 43 cents so far. I’d suggest using a minimum upside objective of 19.03 to manage the risk of whatever position you may still hold.
Someone in the chat room mentioned the “possibility” (per Bloomberg) of the euro dropping to 1.380, so I thought I’d have a look myself, lest the useless notion of the merely possible gain traction among subscribers. Anything is possible, of course, but from a Hidden Pivot perspective the euro looks like a 3-to-2 bet to noodle around for the next week or two. If the euro does fall anew relative to the dollar, however, a tradable low at or near 1.4020 would not be unthinkable, provided its midpoint sibling at 1.4299 gets breached hard. But the larger downtrend from early December’s high appears to have chickened out just shy of a supportive low at 1.4200 recorded in September 2009. This suggests that although the bear market has further to go, it will need more time in distribution before the next big leg down.
Friday’s New Moon plunge turned a boring 180-minute chart a smidgen less so; moreover, the MLK-Day rally Monday night was threatening to make the picture interesting, even. The pattern shown in the chart, sloppy ’A' and all, yields a Hidden Pivot midpoint support at 1128.50, and that’s where I’d suggest that you try bottom-fishing, stop 1127.90, if the opportunity should arise. This plan will remain viable as long as the point ‘C’ of the pattern, 1137.75, is not breached by some puny spoiler-of-a-rally. ______ UPDATE (10:17 a.m. EST): The overnight correction to 1126.25 took out any midpoint support we might have identified, stopping us out in the process for a trading loss of three ticks (i.e., $37.50). Although this hinted of more weakness to come, the futures have instead whipped around and rallied 15 points, presumably for some news-driven reason. Could prospects of a Brown victory in Massachusetts be driving stocks this early in the day?
What the bullish pattern shown in the chart lacks in subtlety it makes up for in robustness. The pattern is in-your-face obvious, with key resistance at 1074.90 — a midpoint Hidden Pivot that was missed by 12 points at the top of the last rally cycle. This is not a sign of serious weakness, but neither does it portend an imminent show of strength. A few weeks of tired consolidation would be congruent with the technical signs, and that is what I am forecasting for now. This bland outlook would be affirmed by weakness today or tomorrow that breaches the 1126.50 low recorded on Friday. That number lies within three ticks of a midpoint support at 1126.80, and a close below it would grease the skids down to 1106.90, its ‘D’ sibling. Alternatively, and very bullish, would be a rally today or tomorrow that hits 1154.00. That would create a bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart that would be especially encouraging, since it would relegate the corrective abcd to the failure bin.
Traders should brace for a celebration on Wall Street Wednesday if Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown wins Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate. A Brown victory in Tuesday’s special election would destroy the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and with it President Obama’s damn-the-torpedoes effort to steer the country hard-left. Derailing the Democrats’ machine would come as good news to Wall Street, since there is probably no area of investment opportunity that is not being eyed as a source of » Read the full article
Health Bill Looks Dead No Matter What
by Rick Ackerman on January 20, 2010 5:22 am GMT · 12 comments
[Bulletin: As we went to press, Brown has been declared the winner by ABC News, and Coakley has conceded. Today’s commentary can nonetheless stand as is.] There were no voting results to speak of early Tuesday evening, but that didn’t stop pundits from shifting into high gear with speculation about the implications of a Republican win in Massachusetts. The pundits ran with the hypothetical story simply because it was far more interesting than the dog-bites-man drivel that will result if Democrat Martha Coakley bests Scott Brown in the special election to fill Teddy Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat. As of late » Read the full article