Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Tick charts and ‘k-A’ segments

– Posted in: Tutorials

We don’t often venture onto the tick chart, but we made an exception during this session to scrutinize a possible opportunity in December Gold. The opportunity was there, as it nearly always is in the micro time frame, but we learned yet again that the ability to execute the trade without even a moment of hesitation can be crucial. We also looked at a pattern that was tradable only because we paid close attention to the length of the B-C retracement. If your understanding of k-A segments and the “window rule” is fuzzy, this lesson may be helpful.

ESZ11 – December Mini S&P (Last:1245.75)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Although we usually use Hidden Pivots to trade prospective reversal points, I'll suggest trying something new to break the deathly tedium of this corrective dirge, which is about to enter its fourth week. The pennant formation in the chart shown has picked up no fewer than five price points on the daily chart, and it would pick up a sixth if 1225.50 were reached to the downside today. You can bottom-fish this number with a stop-loss as tight as 1.00 pont.  FYI, the slope of the rising line would put our 'buy' point at around 1227.00 if the low were to occur on Thursday. A 1267.50 target should be used to get short if the futures instead rally today.

SIZ11 – December Silver (Last:34.360)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

Like December Gold, December Silver failed yesterday by two ticks to surpass an obvious external peak, consigning the futures to tedium for the remainder of the session. The bigger picture is less bullish than gold's, however, and so the latter will likely have to pull the former higher today if bulls are going to romp. That would imply minimum upside in this vehicle to 35.540 (30m, A=33.130 on 11/10).

GCZ11 – December Gold (Last:1781.20)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

Once again, in the throes of a superficially impressive rally, the futures narrowly failed to surpass an obvious external peak (1787.90), telegraphing the pointless ups and downs that followed. The look of things on the lesser charts is bullish nonetheless, and so I'll suggest using the 1813.50 target shown as a minimum upside objective for the near term.  Its 'p' sibling at 1787.20 has already been exceeded by a few ticks, and while that's encouraging, it is not quite sufficient to imply that a finishing stroke to 'D' is a done deal.

NGZ11 – December Natural Gas (Last:3.406)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

There was some interest in forecasting Natural Gas prices in the chat room yesterday, so I decided to take a crack at it myself.  Lo, the moderately big picture, vivid in the 240-minute chart I've reproduced alongside, suggests the December contract is close to a potentially important low.  The actual low so far has already exceeded my Hidden Pivot target at 3.416, but not by much, and the pattern itself is sufficiently clear that we should expect a tradable price reversal from somewhere near current levels.  Please note that I have allowed room for a somewhat lower low at 3.336 that would result if we use a plausible higher 'A' as the starting point of this down-cycle. Let's try to get long using camouflage tactics near the 3.384 midpoint (5-min, A=3.456, B=3.390, C=3.417) of a pattern identified in the chat room by 'Pivoteer'. FYI, an ETF said in the chat room to mimic NatGas futures bears the symbol UNG.  If it were to bottom at a target equivalent to the one above at 3.416, the turn would come at around 7.32.  This is caveat emptor, since, as I've been warning subscribers for years, ETFs were created for the sole purpose of shorting puts and calls to rubes.

The Affirmative Action President

– Posted in: Free Links Rick's Picks

Obama surely didn’t get where he is today on the basis of ability. That’s the premise of an August 2011 essay that I received yesterday via e-mail from a friend.  It seems implausible that a piece so devastatingly critical of Obama would have appeared in the Washington Post, but the details ring true and so I am running it regardless of its source.  Click here for the complete article.

Two Recession Benefits: Fewer Lawyers, More Farmland

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

[I never imagined that this commentary would revive the inflation-vs-deflation debate, but since it has, I'll let it run for a second day.  Please don't be shy if it is the good news concerning lawyers to which you would like to respond. RA] Two wholly unexpected economic developments suggest that the Great Recession may have a silver lining.  How does an America with more farmland and fewer lawyers sound? Apparently, hard times are helping to bring about both. Regarding the farmland, thousands of acres that had been purchased by speculators for residential development have fallen so steeply in price that farmers are snapping up the parcels for agricultural use. In many cases, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the growers are paying distress prices for land that had been bid into the ionosphere by speculators as recently as five years ago, just before the Great Recession began. To take a dramatic example, a Phoenix-area dairy farmer recently paid $8 million for a 760-acre alfalfa and cotton field that had been sold to a developer in 2005 for $40.8 million, according to the Journal. “Everything in this area is coming back into farmer’s hands,” said the buyer, one of four brothers.  That’s the kind of news that could help take the sting out of high grocery prices, especially since a resurgence of family farming in the U.S. promises to reduce those prices over time. For now, though, because strong crop prices are helping to drive this healthy trend, we should perhaps keep the long-term benefits in mind when we watch the register tape unspool at the checkout counter. As for the lawyers, the schools that train and graduate them are coming under heavy pressure from Congress to divulge data related to job placement and student-loan debt. The suspicion