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COMMENTARY for Thursday
TODAY'S ACTION for Thursday
Rick's Picks for Thursday
If March Copper makes a lower low today on the daily chart, it will quickly approach a midpoint pivot at 2.938 that could be a turning point for a very oversold market. Traders should bid 2.940 with a stop at 2.932. If the stop is hit, the futures should be presumed bound for a ‘D’ target at 2.732, a level last seen four months ago. (Posted by Harry) ______ UPDATE (9:40 a.m. EST): Commodities are getting schmeissed this morning, and Copper has overshot its mark, stopping us out for a $200 loss. The futures now appear bound for a minimum 2.9120.
So long as March Silver’s Wednesday high of 16.950 holds, a midpoint pivot at 15.520 will be on the radar. This is about 5% below the current price, but silver traders are used to such swings, having watched their market fall 4% intraday just yesterday. Bids are recommended at 15.525, with stops at 15.480. The D target at 14.085 would bring back memories of last August. (Posted by Harry) ______ UPDATE (10:37 a.m. EST): Nice shootin’, Harry! The futures have rebounded 17 cents so far after plummeting to 15.500, the low of the day as of now. I recommend taking profits on at least half the position now or using a generous trailing stop to manage a single contract. The theoretical gain on this position would have been as much as $850 per contract so far, or roughly four times what was risked on the initial stop-loss. _______ FURTHER UPDATE (2:46 p.m. EST): Profit-taking when advised would have been timely, since the advice went out within two cents of the top of the day’s best rally. A nasty relapse followed, and the futures have traded as low as 15.305 since. This implies traders should be out based on whatever judicious trailing stop they may have used. The next Hidden Pivot of significance below is 15.020, although I wouldn’t try to bottom-fish there; rather, you should start looking for the turn on the 1- or 3-minute chart from around 15.035, using a camouflage ‘X’ to get long the expectedly nascent uptrend.
Another day spent in conjugal embrace with the pooch, with no previous peaks of any significance surpassed. But notice how DaBoyz did not allow the futures to fall very far either. This suggests they are simply marking time until the conditions are right — which sooner or later they will be — to invoke a short squeeze. Astute pivoteers might notice a succession of closely spaced, descending peaks made yesterday — a veritable forest of potential camouflage opportunities if an A-B rally should pull back from any of the in-between spaces. Your diligence and patience in monitoring this situation could yield a quick pay-off, since immediate upside potential is to 1107.75.
Yesterday’s flurry of selling looks ready to taper off, but there are too many sloppy posssible lows just beneath to gamble much on bottom-fishing. Nevertheless, here are three places to look for the turn, if one comes, ranked most appealing to least: 1101.50, 1104.20 and 1103.20. Alternatively, a pop early in the session above 1113.90 would signal a bullish trend change, albeit a frail one. _______ UPDATE (10:21): I’d say the selling is getting just a tad overdone, but to steal a line from Rahm Emanuel, a good crisis (i.e., the shock, yes shock, of learning that the economy is weak) should never be wasted by Wall Street’s most well connected shakedown artistes, namely those cagey bullion bankers. Please note that I posted a 1057.90 minimum downside target in the chat room at 10:18, with April Gold trading around $1068. The so-far low has been 1060.40 — not quite close enough for us to infer the selling is exhausted. _______ FURTHER UPDATE (2:35 p.m. EST): The futures have relapsed to a new low at 1059.00 — probably close enough to consider the 1057.90 target achieved. Any slippage beneath the target, though, and we should infer more downside to at least 1052.80. That’s a Hidden Pivot, and you could bottom-fish there with a stop no wider than 0.90 points.
If the futures continue lower, look for support around 1.3684, the D target of a small but elegant daily pattern. Traders should bid 1.3690 with stops at 1.3678. (Posted by Harry) ______ UPDATE: The support gave way easily, stopping us out for a theoretical loss of about $150.
A compelling bearish pattern on the daily chart served us well yesterday, and now we should pay close attention to its midpoint at 1.0834. To play for a bounce, bid 1.0838 with a stop at 1.0824. This pattern points all the way down to a D target at 1.0447. ______ UPDATE: The futures rallied from yesterday’s low without looking back, negating our buying strategy.
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The Global Pawn-Shop Economy
by Rick Ackerman on February 4, 2010 3:46 am GMT · 15 comments
For readers who have tired of Rick’s Picks’ sugar-coated predictions for the economy, here’s a despairing jeremiad from that irrepressible bear’s bear, Erich Simon. Is there any escaping the grim future that he foresees? Only on the planet Mars, perhaps (but even there, the dust can kill you). Here’s Erich, with a take on the endgame that some readers may find all too plausible:
When you look at the political leadership in the U.S., it is in complete dis-harmony. In-fighting, finger pointing, fragmentation, bickering, squabbling, separation, individualism, heterogeneity, split, divided, dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself — all the hallmarks of a people in breakdown caught inside the walls of a collapsing and imploding economic environment, fueled by resource depletion and gross mismanagement. That’s » Read the full article