Tuesday, October 25, 2011

That was quite a move we saw yesterday, but was it the start of a sustained bull phase? Probably not, is my guess. Regardless, it could set up a fine camouflage buying opportunity, since the thrust was impulsive without having gotten past the obvious 9/27 peak at 3.4835 that others may be looking at. We'll wait for the pattern to develop further before we jump in, but if it should play out similar to the one shown, that could yield a low-risk buying opportunity. _______ UPDATE: The futures traced out a pattern unlike the one we'd needed to get aboard with little risk.  The move was impulsive nonetheless, yielding a bullish pattern with a 3.6120 midpoint pivot that we can use as a minimum upside objective for the near term.

Close, but no cigar. Like December Gold, silver futures narrowly failed to generate a robust bullish impulse leg on the intraday charts by exceeding a prior peak -- in this case, one at 32.150. If they should do so now, it would be less supportive of the bullish argument than if buyers had managed this feat on the first try. If weakness re-emerges, the first place where we could look for a bullish reversal would be at 30.930, the midpoint Hidden Pivot of the pattern shown.

Yesterday's thrust conspicuously failed to top a 1666.90 peak from a week ago, denying us the felicity of a fresh, bullish impulse leg. What this implies is that, even if an impulse leg should become manifest on the next push, it would not be destined for greatness. In fact, we'd need to see a surge that is unpaused between 1696.80 and 1757.90 before we infer that the punitive correction begun in the dog days of summer is over.  On weakness, look to do your bottom-fishing -- tightly stopped -- at the 1632.20 midpoint support of the pattern (240m): A=1666.90 (10/18), B=1604.70, C=1663.30.

The 1256.50 rally target given here yesterday remains valid as a minimum objective, but any higher and we'd probably be looking at 1271.50, at least. I'd rate the higher number a less risky short, and so I'll officially recommend doing so with a 1271.25 offer and a 1272.25 stop, one contract.  If you are schooled in the "camouflage" arts, however, I'll suggest getting long from here to 1271.25; and then reversing the position via a four-contract short from near 1271.50. If the expected top occurs during market hours, check back here, since I may update with a specific, detailed strategy in real time.  Want to learn how to nail swing highs and lows precisely, and to manage trade risk with a simple approach? Click here for information about the upcoming Hidden Pivot Webinar on November 16-17 and a $50 discount.

The retail blight that has laid waste to malls and shopping plazas across America has claimed yet another high-value victim near our Colorado neighborhood: The Great Indoors, a remodeling and redecorating megastore in Broomfield’s Flatiron Marketplace. When the Sears-owned emporium goes darks in mid-December, it will leave 58 people jobless and a 155,000-square-foot building empty. It could also sink the entire Flatiron Marketplace, since the closure will more than double the facility’s vacancy rate to 67%.  That number had hovered near 30% for the last couple of years after Office Depot, Linens N Things and Nordstrom Rack departed in quick succession, leaving the shopping center’s manager with the daunting task of finding new tenants even as retail vacancies continue to soar locally and nationally.  The huge new hole in the retail landscape comes at a bad time for nearby Flatiron Crossing Mall, a 1.5 million-square-foot, $220 million shopping center that itself is reeling from the recent closures of Borders Books and Ultimate Electronics. Other stores that have closed there in recent years include Abercrombie & Fitch, which mistakenly thought its snob-appeal pricing would survive the Great Recession; Fossil, McDonald’s, Godiva Chocolates, Sharper Image and numerous smaller retailers. The exodus actually began about eight years ago when one of Flatiron Crossing’s anchor tenants, Lord & Taylor, became a casualty of a 32-store closing by the parent company. The two-story building that had housed Lord & Taylor, an upscale department store, sat empty for six years, a gangrenous appendage of a mall that has been in survival mode ever since. Will City Survive Loss? An even bigger casualty of these closings could be Broomfield, which depends heavily on sales taxes to fill its coffers. Years ago, the City of Broomfield split off from Boulder County and re-incorporated as a county in order