The futures wasted an entire day failing to fall to an in-our-face Hidden Pivot support at 1194.00. The target remains valid nonetheless, and you can plan once again on bottom-fishing with an 1194.25 bid, stop 1193.50. I don’t intend for you to take this position home over the weekend, so don’t initiate the trade so late in the day that you might have trouble exiting by the close. Since the market’s resilience yesterday came on a day when bad news from Cisco should have caused stocks to get schmeissed, there is always that chance they’ll go higher today. This would be a non-event, however, until such time as 1219.75 is reached, since that’s where a bullish impulse leg would be created on the 15-minute chart. _______ UPDATE (8:58 a.m. ET): I blew a nice trade by not following my own rule, which says: Put the stop-loss below the next whole number – in this case, 1193.00. The implied 1192.75 stop-loss — rather than the showboatingly tight 1193.50 that I advised – would have caught the subsequent 13-point rally and provided an effortless ride to a gain of as much as $650 per contract.
From the monthly archives:
November 2010
It’s quite a challenge for me to keep from trash-talking the dollar, since I admittedly lack the imagination to find an even remotely plausible reason for it to rally – other than a purely technical one. Be that as it may, yesterday’s logic-challenged thrust surpassed the first of three peaks on the daily chart that will need to be dispatched to clear the way for an intermediate-term rally of perhaps 3-4 weeks. Accomplishing this would require a mere puddle jump to 78.70, just 0.41 points above yesterday’s 78.29 high. This modest feat seems a foregone conclusion at this point but we’ll hold the one-handed applause until such time as it actually happens.
William Greider, writing in The Nation, sees a global economy on the brink of a potentially catastrophic trade war. “We have reached the endpoint of globalization as we have known it,” writes Greider. “It cannot continue as before, because the United States is essentially tapped out. Goliath has fallen and cannot get up. Who will lend a hand? Not China, obviously, but also not Japan and the Asian Tigers, or the European nations.”
Because Greider has tailored his article for a far-left publication, it glosses over the fact that America’s standard of living would have to take a huge hit before we could even hope to compete with Asian manufacturers. Union wages in the manufacturing sector in particular would have to fall by perhaps half, with commensurate cuts in health care and pension benefits. Of course, much higher levels of capital investment could make us competitive over time. However, drastic changes in this area are inconceivable, since Americans are 50 years removed from knowing how to save and invest. Had we done so with the zeal of Asians, we’d have state-of-the-art factories today that could overcome Asia’s wage advantage while leveraging the much lower shipping costs associated with serving a domestic market.
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(We’re always delighted to hear from our globe-trotting friend, Auerbach & Grayson’s Jonathan Auerbach, who visits the most exotic places on earth in search of lucrative investment opportunities. From the sounds of it, Zimbabwe has come a long way since his last visit. RA)
Today I shall not challenge you with numbers or intense points of view and just relate a few anecdotes of travelling on the ‘Frontier’ over the past couple of days. Dinner in Harare on Tuesday night at Victoria 22… just over 2 years ago I regaled you and sent an attachment of the bill for dinner at this palace of gustatory delights; it was Z$ 1.7 billion which I paid with a stack of bills 6 inches high. This time the bill for 7 of us including the post-prandial cigars and exotic quaffs was $470 with tips and no problem sending a bill. In the new world when many more of you will travel to Zim, plan ahead and book a table here; it was packed.
Yesterday morning we left Bulawayo by car at 0600 for the 500 KM trip North to Victoria Falls and the Zambian border. Our lovely Garmin guide on GPS once we left town announced ‘continue straight for 480 KM’…so much for getting lost in Africa. Diesel, however, proved to be a problem en route as every station we stopped at for the first several hundred KM had nasty signs which read…’no petrol, no diesel’. Well,just as our further progress looked problematic we found a station with diesel, but the attendant said he couldn’t pump since electric power was out in their area. Your intrepid brokers solved this with a small donation and we suddenly heard the sweet sounds of a generator firing up and providing satisfaction for our thirsty vehicle.
So on to Vic Falls…I won’t succumb to all the deserved hyperbole when you are physically in the presence of one of the 7 Wonders of our World…it is extraordinary…go there once. Late yesterday, and we are now in Zambia, we came to a screeching halt as we came upon a bull elephant in the middle of the road. Armed with my FLIP video-cam and not quite Scorcese skills I did my best to show him charging various vehicles that attempted to cross his path as we cautiously waited for him to move on. I have sent the video to my children and hopefully after judicious editing that I would have no idea how to do perhaps I can have an Andy Warhol moment on UTube.
December Gold is aiming for 1367.9 so long as it remains below 1410.0. The futures have active patterns pointing both up and down, with 1367.9 as a buyable dowside target (with a stop at 1366.9) so long as 1410.0 is not revisited. If it is, we will be left with no confirmed bearish targets, and the major objectives will all be in record territory, 1431.6 coming first among them. (Posted by Doug McLagan) _______ UPDATE (2:10 p.m. EST): 1410.0 was surpassed by a rally that peaked at 1417.6. As the futures declined from there, a new version of the bearish pattern was confirmed and was noted in the chat room and in the webinar, albeit with some caution. But the futures bounced at the exact midpoint of the new pattern and rallied more than eleven dollars.
Crude oil is approaching a longstanding target at 89.88. December crude oil futures have traced out a very elegant pattern from a starting point at 75.10, visible on the weekly chart as a simple, classic form. The “D” target at 89.88 is near enough to the round ninety-dollar number that it is probably not wise to trade the pivot with a tight stop entered ahead of time. Traders should watch the market as it approaches $90 and use hidden pivot techniques to identify and short a downturn there. A reversal near the pivot that does not quite touch 90.00 should be strongly preferred. (Posted by Doug McLagan)
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The rally off yesterday’s low got past an “external” peak on the 30-minute chart, but it failed by a tick to exceed the second that we require to signal a bullish impulse leg. Ordinarily I’d deliberately overlook this sign of weakness because I have come to forecast higher prices for this vehicle more or less habitually each day. (Does it ever go down??) For a change, though, and to help break a bad habit that could eventually lull me into complacency at the wrong time, I’m going to focus on a bearish target at 1194.00. Shown in the accompanying chart, it can be bottom-fished with an 1194.25 bid, stop 1193.50.
The futures overshot the 26.710 midpoint support shown in the chart, implying more downside at least to its ’d’ sibling, 25.250. The target, as well as the short-term-bearish outlook, would be negated by a print today exceeding 28.195, since that would create a promising impulse leg on the 30-minute chart.
Media Spins Illusion of Hope and Change
by Wayne Razzi on November 12, 2010 12:01 am GMT · 51 comments
(Today’s commentary, on the pernicious influence of the mainstream media, is from Wayne Razzi — aka “Red Will” in the Rick’s Picks forum. We only think we are changing this world for the better when we throw the rascals out on election day, says Wayne. In reality…well, there may be no reality for those who see the world through the eyes of TV news, pop magazines and newspapers. If we are to escape from the illusion that has imprisoned us like a maze, says Wayne, we’re going to simply have to free our minds from the illusion itself and walk away from it. RA)
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Before the season of the witch recedes from memory, let’s have a little fun. You’re having a dream. You dream that you’re a family man who’s awakened on the Saturday morning before Halloween. You find yourself at the breakfast table and it isn’t long before your wife, whispering to you of course so as to not tip off the kids, suggests that you fit some “agri-tainment” into your plans. You immediately take to the idea with visions of your wife suddenly bearing a strong resemblance to one of the gals from Petticoat Junction. Your wife, knowing you only too well, quickly reminds you that what she actually meant was for you to take the family to the local farm for some pumpkin-picking, hay rides and of course some time spent in the Corn Maze. The visions of Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo and Ellie May, while we’re on the genre, all quickly dissipate.
Now you’re at the farm having a good old time. You save the best for last and thus you all enter the corn maze in the afternoon. It’s much larger and more sophisticated in its design than you expected and it’s not simply rows and columns of corn stalks either. You find that there are “rooms” within it that contain all sorts of fun diversions. Though they are simple, they still provide » Read the full article