Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I've flagged long-entry opportunities in Silver and Gold tonight, so check out the charts accompanying their respective touts if you want guidance.  The trade in Silver has already triggered, although the one in Gold awaits a similar signal.

A prospective 'camo' trade that I flagged in Gold has already triggered tonight in this vehicle, although I am not recommending that you play catch-up.  The rally looks likely to reach the 41.450 midpoint (i.e., an officially 'successful' launch), but night owls should wait for a tradable pullback after the futures have surpassed  the 'external' peak at 41.500 before diving in. This may require a deft touch, but there are enough peaks, even on the hourly chart, to afford several potential entry opportunities.

Tedium carried the day, leaving neither bulls nor bears with an appreciable edge at the bell.  A  1771.50 downside target given here earlier is still in play, although yesterday's close above its sibling midpoint, 1830.30, is encouraging. If buyers are ready to seize the advantage, they'll signal it with a pop above the 'external' peak at 1851.50 shown in the chart.  This structural resistance could provide an excellent 'camo' entry opportunity, as could either of the two peaks to the left of it.

A frustrating day for bears ended with the promise of yet another on Wednesday. Notice in the chart how the intraday high slightly exceeded the look-to-the-left peak at 1169.50.  The move is therefore impulsively bullish and it could conceivably yield an opportune long entry for night owls.  If you're game, I'll suggest looking for your spot at the right-hand edge of the 15-minute chart, where the most recent impulse leg,  with a 'D' target at 1174.75, began from 1154.25 at 12:15 p.m.  _______ UPDATE (2:11 a.m. EDT):  The futures are getting hit tonight and are down 15 points at the moment.  Bears shouldn't get their hopes too high, however, since the modus operandi of nighttime traders is to exhaust sellers on ostensibly "bad" news in order to run the index futures higher on zero volume ahead of the opening. Want to learn how to nail swing highs and lows precisely, and to manage trade risk yourself? Click here for information about the upcoming Hidden Pivot Webinar on October 5-6 and a $50 discount

With Bank of America’s recent announcement that it plans to lay off 30,000 workers, the Great Recession has finally spread its shadow over a sector of the economy that had seemed inured to hard times.  Investment consulting, mortgages, mergers and acquisitions and the rest of banking’s most lucrative concessions have fallen into a more or less permanent funk, and so the banks are faced with the prospect of earning their money the hard way – i.e., through ruthless cost-cutting, and via fees on checking accounts, credit cards and other transaction-based services.  How dull! Embarrassing, even, since financial bigwigs who were pulling down seven-figure bonuses just a year ago thanks to the Federal Reserve’s extravagant bailout terms will now be fighting to earn their base pay by nickel-and-diming their customers to death. Imagine a loan officer having to concern himself with something so mundane as a local businessman’s request for money to finance inventory. We feel sorry for the many bank employees who are about to lose their jobs, especially since they face such bleak prospects for re-employment. With respect to the fate of banking’s top brass, however, it’s going to be hard to hide our schadenfreude if a few of these prodigious paper-shufflers wind up living out of shopping carts.  Ditto for securities traders at the big banks, for they have turned the markets into a giant casino, exploiting mathematically arcane opportunities that have absolutely nothng to do with the business of making, buying and selling real things.  In recent years, stock and bond markets have almost completely decoupled from the real economy – so much so that they will probably have to collapse into ruin before honest markets can re-emerge – markets that serve the real commerce of the real world.  The epic fraud of financial markets reached its