Friday, November 19, 2010

ESZ10 – E-Mini S&P (Last:1196.25)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Let's spare ourselves any ambitions in this vehicle today, since the minor-cycle ABCD rally begun yesterday left a gap that no bull could have traded. The presumptive finishing stroke projects to 1204.25,  but that Hidden Pivot resistance holds little promise for shorting because it lies so close to a 1205.75 peak from November 15 --  peak that seems likely to tempt breakout traders.

SIZ10 – December Silver (Last:27.240)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Silver did everything bulls might have hoped for yesterday -- did those things so well, in fact, that gold may find silver's upward pull magnetic over the near term.  While gold narrowly missed creating a bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart, silver created a robust one with the potential to reach 27.780 over the near term.  Please note as well that there is an important midpoint resistance between here and there at 27.685, and if it's easily brushed aside, bulls should take strong encouragement.  A close above it would put in play the 30.385 target of the large pattern shown in the chart.

GCZ10 – December Gold (Last:1358.20)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

For all of the exhilaration bulls may have felt yesterday, it must be noted that the rally failed by a potentially crucial point-and-a-half to surpass a key external peak at 1364.30. We'll give the bulls another chance today, however, since they were in the process of creating a 1366.00 target early Friday morning.  If it's reached, more upside to at least 1378.40 would become a safe bet.  That is the Hidden Pivot midpoint of the large pattern shown in the chart.

HGZ10 – December Copper (Last:3.8510)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Technically speaking, Copper has taken a much harder hit recently than Gold and Silver.  Is this where they finally part company?  We could know soon, since the December contract is tracing out a downtrending abc with the potential to produce an analytically telling Hidden Pivot midpoint support. I've drawn a few hypothetical price bars to illustrate this in the accompanying chart. You should stay tuned in any event, since the pattern looks likely to develop in a way that could yield a low-risk entry point for bottom-fishing traders.

Shooting from the Hip, Sinclair Hits Bullseyes

– Posted in: Commentary for the Week of March 8 Free

Readers of these commentaries will already know that I don’t like to go too terribly far out on a limb when forecasting bullion’s next leap. I’ve always preferred to forecast long-term trends one predictable step at a time – a cautious but reliable way of seeing things that has attracted many like-minded subscribers over the years. There have been times when this approach contrasted sharply with my dire outlook for the economy. In the late 1990s, for instance, the column that I freelanced to the Sunday San Francisco Examiner was probably the most bearish rant published regularly in a big-circulation newspaper.  Examiner readers would not likely have imagined that, on the guru side of my life, I was getting things consistently right in a stock-and-commodities letter that went out each day to professional option traders. I got it right because, rather than follow my instincts -- which, to put it charitably, stink --  I used coldly mechanical indicators. Contrast that with the shoot-from-the-hip showmanship of Mr. Bet-a-Million, my colleague Jim Sinclair.  Although his style and methods differ radically from my own, I have only respect for the man and for the way he has stuck to his guns on gold no matter what was happening in the markets. When an ounce was trading for around $1200 back in 2008, so certain was Sinclair that the price would rise to at least $1650 by this January that he baited doubters with a $1 million bet. Did he perhaps know something?  Of course not. No one could possibly know for certain where gold would be trading three years from a given date. But he did know – and never tired of telling us -- that the U.S. Government had embarked on the most reckless credit expansion in human history – a blowout