Wednesday, January 12, 2011

It appears that nothing -- let me repeat that word: n-o-t-h-i-ng -- can hold this little sonofabitch down for long.  As I have pointed out many times, this is mainly because, insiders aside, there are no sellers.  With institutional bias on bullish autopilot via algorithmic trading, we shouldn't get our bearish hopes too high every time stocks falter. The S&Ps did so again recently by narrowly failing to achieve a 1278.75 target, but the comeuppance has been mild and the correction shallow. Accordingly, we must adjust our sights higher, since the most compelling pattern on the hourly chart implies the futures will hit 1285.25 on the next leap.  The HP midpoint associated with that target is 1271.50, but there is already too much chop in the vicinity of that number to create an easy opportunity for camoflageurs. The consolation prize for (eternally) patient, vigilant bears, is that the 1285.25 target is short-able with a 1.00-point stop-loss.

A bullish projection for Silver is becoming reality as I write these words, since the futures popped through an important short-term hidden resistance as I was putting the finishing touches on Tuesday's tout.  Night owls should look for a camouflage entry opportunity, since there is very nearly some on the hourly chart.

The futures blew past my 29.615 target, hitting an interim high ten cents above it before settling into a day-long consolidation in a narrow range.  The pause looks like it's about to bear fruit, since the futures are butting up against the intraday high this evening with little sign of being intimidated.  Each new stab has been creating a fresh impulse leg on the hourly chart, so the rally appears healthy (as opposed to deceptive).  For now, use the 30.190 target of the pattern shown as a minimum objective. It'll be a lock-up, as far as I'm concerned, if the futures exceed its sibling midpoint, 29.760. ______ UPDATE (9 :00 p.m. ET):  Silver popped just as I was putting the finishing touches on the tout.

What would a trading session be without the obligatory swoon that so often separates night and day moods in this vehicle?  The recovery phase did not quite reach my target at 1391.30, but it remains valid nonetheless. Incidentally, and for your information, the first push above a midpoint resistance I'd flagged at 1378.20 occurred at 2:45 a.m. ET, and it yielded a camouflage entry that spiked to 1382.40 in the space of a few minutes.  This is shown in the chart.

We bought two February 310 puts yesterday for 2.85 when Apple opened on a gap to 344.49, just 12 cents from a well-advertised Hidden Pivot. Was this the last gasp of an intermediate-term rally that has seen the stock rise by $23?  We should know soon, but for now tie the puts to a break-even stop-loss, making it one-cancels-other with another order, good indefinitely, to short two February 300 puts for 2.85.  If filled, we will have legged into a theoretically riskless, vertical bear spread with profit potential of as much as $2000 if the stock falls hard.

We’ve shied away from the Arizona shooting because we didn’t want to open a can of worms in the Rick’s Picks forum.  However, because the tragic rampage at a Tucson political gathering has completely dominated the news since Saturday, when it occurred, and because the shockwaves are likely to reverberate for weeks, months or even years, we’ll say a few words and leave it at that. We were initially surprised that a news story about a nut with a gun who murders six people at a political forum and seriously injures 14 others could take flight the way this story has. With all the fatal shootings that have occurred in recent years -- in schools and office buildings, at social gatherings, religious enclaves, Army bases, post offices, college campuses and elsewhere-- we’d have thought Americans had grown inured to news of yet another murderous spree. What’s different about this spree, apparently, is that its purpose, if indeed there was one, has been conflated with the angry political mood over President Obama’s attempt to radically remake the nation’s health care system. One might have thought the political furies had spent themselves when Obamacare slashed and burned its way through Congress last year in search of votes. But with mounting threats to dismantle the legislation piece-by-piece starting to gel, perhaps it was inevitable that those who have supported Obamacare all along would unleash a new round of salvos at those who would deign to challenge it.  In fact,  the barrage they’ve launched is more like an A-bomb in that it would risk damaging the entire social and legal infrastructure of free speech in order to silence Obamacare’s most strident critics.  Redneck, or Zen One of them, as we know, is Sarah Palin, and it is upon her that the political left has trained