February 11th, 2012
Published Daily
COMMENTARY for Thursday

Silver quotes have come back down to earth with a thud, so perhaps it’s time to review our outlook, which was, and still is, quite bullish for both the intermediate and long-term. The Comex July contract has shed a hefty 10 percent of its value since Tuesday, settling at 17.51 yesterday after peaking just two days earlier at 18.89. Although this has caused some gnashing of teeth and sporadic expressions of anguish in the Rick’s Picks chat room, long-term bullion players who frequent the room seem to be taking the move in stride.

We ourselves sounded an especially bullish note a week ago when we wrote that it would be a “piece of cake” for Comex silver futures to push above some daunting reservoirs of supply on the intraday charts.  The June contract duly obliged shortly thereafter, but as you can see in the May futures chart below, the rally left one key high at 18.91 recorded in January » Read the full article


TODAY'S ACTION for Thursday

Dollar Could Top Here

by Rick Ackerman on May 6, 2010 4:43 am GMT

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Rick's Picks for Thursday
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Yesterday’s price action was so sloppy that it may need a good, clean head-fake today to complete what looks like a nasty distribution.  I’ll suggest shorting into the rally, but it remains to be seen whether this can be done at the c-d midpoint of a minor uptrend. My preference would be to look for camouflage on a downtrending abc, since shorts are likely to be more nervous than usual with volatility running so high this week. If the Indoos simply head lower, use a midpoint pivot at 10768 for potentially tradable support. ______ UPDATE (11:21 a.m. EDT):  By cracking the midpoint support by a decisive 15 points (so far), the Dow has generated a new minimum downside target at 10589.  Sayonara, all you bulls!

The bounce from yesterday’s lows looked bound for 1188.70 at the close, subject to midpoint resistance at 1179.50.  A print at that last price would not encounter any obvious structural resistance, so it’s possible we would have relatively little competition if we were  to attempt to get long on a breakout above our “invisible resistance.” As of around 9 p.m. EDT, there were no downtrends on the lesser charts to set up a possible bottom-fishing attempt. _______ UPDATE (9:03 a.m. EDT):   The strategy was a winner, since the futures surged $6 after stalling at precisely 1179.40 for two two hours in the wee hours.  They have since sold off as they so very often do after making an overnight high, but the 1188.70 target will remain valid in theory as long as 1170.30 has not been breached to the downside. _____ FURTHER UPDATE (11:27 a.m. EDT):  The futures rallied to exactly 1188.60, then pulled back to a so-far low of 1182.00.  They appear to be consolidating for another run-up, but it seemed to be developing too slowly to hit its 1202.40 target during this session.    Keep in mind that we have a more important target working as well — at 1208.90.

Yesterday’s high came within 0.06 points of a compelling Hidden Pivot at 84.25 (see chart), so we might look for a top here of at least intermediate importance.  If the Dollar Index simply continues higher, however, the next place where we might look for a tradable top would be at 85.67, a Hidden Pivot found by relocating point B up to 82.24.

GOOG – Google (Last:498.02)

by Rick Ackerman on May 6, 2010 4:39 am GMT

With yesterday’s 500.47 low, Google is closing on a 488.33 target, a Hidden Pivot that would max out the theoretical downside on the daily chart.  I don’t trust this stock to give us a precise low for bottom-fishing with a tight stop-loss, but my expectations are high for a tradable turn from somewhere very close to our number. If you’re hunting for camouflage, I’d jump onto the 3-minute bars if and when Google comes down to 490.50.  I’ve set a screen alert so that if the opportunity presents itself, we can try to catch this one together during a real-time webinar.  I haven’t played around with Google this way before, but I suspect the stock can be easily cornered and trapped if we chase it down on the very lesser charts as it approaches a crucial turning point. ______ UPDATEWith the Dow in a thousand-point freefall, Google bottomed at $460, down $50. However, the subsequent surreal, $50 bounce occurred too quickly to act upon, much less discuss in a webinar.

$SLW – Silver Wheaton (Last:35.93)

by Rick Ackerman on February 9, 2012 4:24 am GMT

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$GS – Goldman Sachs (Last:116.29)

by Rick Ackerman on February 8, 2012 3:36 am GMT

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Dow Industrial Average (DJIA) price chart with targetsTake any dozen good reasons for being bearish right now and they still don’t equal the bullishness of the chart shown. The undeniably compelling rally objective is 13085, a 4.8% move from current levels, and one can only surmise that the dusting the 12158 midpoint received on the last pullback (12/28) all but clinched a finishing stroke to the higher number. Moreover, it implies that bears shouldn’t get their hopes too high even if, in the next few days, the Dow plummets 324 points to retest the midpoint support. As of now, that would signal not weakness, but a screaming opportunity to get long.  Hard to believe, really, but that’s what the charts say. 


This Just In... for Thursday

Meet Rick Ackerman: The Man Who Helped Bust A Cheating Merrill TraderBack in 1990, a market maker at the Pacific Exchange named Rick Ackerman helped the FBI catch a criminal trader from Merrill Lynch who had poisoned several packages of Smith-Kline (now Glaxo Smith-Kline) drugs and purchased out-of-the-money put options in hopes of cashing in.

Today, it’s much harder to commit securities fraud with all the tools put in place and active monitoring. But back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, there was no internet. No free charts service. No options listings in the paper. But what seemed like the perfect crime would ultimately be foiled by one man: Rick Ackerman.

Read more…


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