Friday, July 1, 2011

SIN11 – July Silver (Last:34.812)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

Silver continues to hang on for dear life, and it would take quite an upthrust to ameliorate its immediate distress. Specifically, the futures would need to pop above prior peaks at 36.770 and  37.860 without taking a breather to turn the daily chart bullish. Alternatively, the big picture would take a significant turn for the worse on a printdown to 31.775 -- $1.635 beneath Monday's low. That would create a new, bearish impulse leg on the daily chart and set up a test of a major midpoint support at 31.205.

GCQ11 – August Gold (Last:1486.90)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

New clues about the intermediate-term trend should come soon from the downtrending abc pattern shown in the chart, since the futures were stealing up on its 1496.90 midpoint pivot when the regular session ended yesterday.  Its breach would portend more slippage to the 'd' sibling at 1479.10, but please note that neither of these Hidden Pivots should be used for bottom fishing -- at least, not without camouflage -- because of the sausage-y quality of point 'B' (i.e., it failed to get past some mid-May lows) .  Note as well that 1479.10 is dangerously close to the brink, since it lies within a hair of the key structural support (originally a hidden support) at 1472.60 recorded on May 17. _______ UPDATE (11:39 a.m. EDT): Bad news: Not only have the futures "slipped" to the 1479.10 target, they've done slightly worse, making their intreaday low so far ay 1478.30, down $25 at that point. They have since rebounded $10, but it's just an oversold bounce. It'll take a surge of about $15 from here, to above 1502.30, to turn the hourly chart bullish again.

ESU11 – September E-Mini S&P (Last:1327.25)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

The 1317.25 midpoint resistance that I drum-rolled here yesterday caught the intraday high within a single tick.  I hadn't explicitly suggested shorting there -- only using it as a benchmark to determine whether the E-Minis are feisty enough to keep rolling all the way up to 1382.25.  The jury's still out on that one, but because DaBoyz appear to have shorts by the scrotum, I wouldn't expect a merciful evening.  The pullback so far has been shallow, but in any event, I'll hold to the criterion given here yesterday -- that the September contract must close above 1317.25 for two consecutive days to signal an impending rampage.  Since Thursday's settlement price was 1314.75, we'll adopt a wait-and-see stance. _______ UPDATE (11:43 a.m. EDT):  The rampage looks unstoppable, the futures having pushed as high as 1328.00 so far today. Besides oblierating the 1317.25 midpoint resistance on a spike opening,  the rally has also exceeded the 1325.25 target of a lesser pattern that we focused on during last night's installment of the Hidden Pivot Course.

Young Rebels Aim to Set College Economics Straight

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

[Guest commentator Edward Furst, introduced here a couple of weeks ago in an essay about Young Americans for Liberty, has some disturbing news concerning the way economics is taught at the nation’s colleges.  It would seem that more than a few professors are either poorly informed about the subject, or, like Paul Krugman, downright nutty. Moreover, their ideological bias is pushing the already dismal science beyond the pale of reason. The good news is that young people like Edward, a Mises Institute graduate and online rabble rouser, are fighting hard to combat economic ignorance. In the essay below, we glimpse the young libertarian and former collegian at work. RA] Over the next seven years, the Federal Government is poised to squander triple the amount of money spent fighting WWII. And that’s adjusted for inflation! Total unfunded liabilities on the federal ledger consistently exceed the GDP of the entire world.  The government could raise the top marginal income tax rate to 100% for all those shysters making more than $250K annually and not even cover the deficit. They could liquidate the assets of every Fortune 500 company and every billionaire in America, yet red ink would still flow from Imperial fountain-pens like human and animal waste down the Ganges. “Fear Not!” say the demagogues. “It’s not a spending problem, but a revenue problem!” Once upon a time, such deluded statements earned one a trip to the doctor.  Now, they get you an esteemed economics faculty position at some prestigious university.  I got to know this phenomenon well when I studied Principles of Macroeconomics under Anne Gongwe, a professor at Colorado State University. Anne is a delightful person, but I must say, her Ph.D. would better serve as kindling for Rick’s readers during the coming collapse than as a qualification to inculcate