Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Use the 31.755 target of the pattern shown to buy four contracts with a three-tick stop-loss. If the order fills and survives till morning, I will post further guidance. However, you should take half the position off if it goes in the black by nine ticks (i.e., 4.5 cents), and stop yourself out of the rest if a downtrend generates a bearish impulse leg on the three-minute chart. _____ UPDATE (2:09 p.m. EST): Around 1 a.m., the futures did indeed take a tradable, 5-cent bounce from 31.750, implying that you would have bought as advised and taken profits on half the position on the brief rally that followed, only to see the futures dive to lower lows, stopping you out, overnight. Officially, I'll score the trade as a scratch.

We took the money and ran yesterday, exiting the last piece of a long position at 1709.00 on a stop-loss. The position was held overnight and produced a theoretical gain of $2200 for each initial four-lot acquired.  I have mixed feelings about bailing out, since one of these little rallies that we've boarded is going to be the one that launches the futures toward the 1977.70 target shown in the chart.  The 1756.40 p sibling of that number has already been smashed, and that is bullish, but our immediate enthusiasm should be tempered by the failure of last month's rally to push above any of September's peaks.

We've been using a 108.67 target for the December contract since, oh...forever, suffering the tedium of an intervening dirge that has not altered my bullish outlook. Shifting to the March futures, there's a lesser target at 102.34 that may not survive this hours-old pullback, since it is just shy of invalidating the point 'C' low at 97.37. However, if the pattern survives, refreshing the bullish energy of the hourly chart and puncturing a 102.47 midpoint , we could look for more immediate upside to its sibling 'D' target, 109.65.  In any event, prospects over the next few weeks look quite bullish to me based on the breach 12 days of ago of a 102.81 peak recorded in July.  Click here if you’d like to learn more about the Hidden Pivot Method, including how to identify and trade targets such as the ones given above, and to forecast trends with bold confidence.

I don't trust this rally any farther than I could heave an anvil, but if you look at the chart and pretend it belongs to a trading vehicle that you like -- gold, for instance -- the short-term outlook is undeniably bullish. Assuming the 1182.50 point 'C' bottom of the pattern shown holds, the next pop should reach 1205.75, a Hidden Pivot, or perhaps a secondary target at 1208.25 if it's exceeded.  More immediately, the futures will need to get past the 1194.25 midpoint resistance tied to the lower target. Camouflageurs looking to get long won't have much to work with, since the point 'B' of any micro-impulse leg you might use to do this would have to occur at exactly 1199.75.  The chart shows why.  ______ UPDATE (9:16 a.m. EST): The 1205.75 target caught the overnight top, 1206.00, within a single tick. The futures have since receded by a 13 points to a pre-opening low of 1193.00

We have our doubts that bullion prices are about to embark on a major rally, since yesterday’s admittedly encouraging upthrust was tied to a stock-market rampage that, having occurred for all of the wrong reasons, is doomed to fail.  It was in fact a quite nasty bear squeeze that sent stocks soaring overnight. The short-covering panic was triggered by rumors -- later denied – that Italy was about to receive an $800 billion bailout.  There were also some news stories over the weekend suggesting that Americans had done their patriotic best to kick off the holiday shopping season with a bang. These two news items, even without confirmation of Italy’s rescue, caused index futures to leap wildly higher Sunday night, all but guaranteeing that the Dow Industrials would open up at least 200 points on Monday morning. This they did, achieving an intraday peak 330 points above Friday’s settlement. Would-be stock traders found themselves choking on dust Monday morning, however, since the gap-up opening left no opportunity to get onboard. Even so, via actionable advice disseminated Sunday night, Rick’s Picks subscribers could have caught a profitable ride in Comex December Gold. Here’s the trading “tout” exactly as it went out at around 8:30 p.m.: Europe's latest bailout, this time for Italy, has goosed the futures into a steep climb. Use 1712.50 as a minimum upside target for now, keeping in mind that anything above that would suggest that plenty of buying power remains to be spent.  For camouflage purposes, you can try getting long if, on the 15-minute charts, the futures create an A-B impulse leg by exceeding the 1708.90 peak from last Wednesday without taking out the more obvious one at 1710.80.  This was occurring as we went to press. ‘Camouflage’ Trading Ultimately, we exited the trade with a