Wednesday, January 25, 2012

No change. There are no rally targets worth mentioning right now, but any effort to get long at these levels is justified by the robustness of last Friday's impulsive thrust. Camouflageurs should do their stalking on the 15-minute chart, which is starting to accumulate a nice inventory of potentially useful internal and external peaks.

The chart shows a 1690.10 target I'd mentioned earlier as a logical minimum rally objective if and when Monday's 1681.80 peak is surpassed. Camouflageurs should use the 15-minute chart, which displays a series of potentially usable internal and external peaks between here and 1680.

In volume-free night trading, DaBoyz have sleazed the futures back up to within a couple of points of Monday's high, demonstrating their (probably sound) belief that they still have bulls by the balls.  Where to next? Scrunch the hourly chart (see inset) a bit and, paradoxically,  this will force you to squint a good ABCD rally pattern into sharper obviousness.  This one projects to 1333.25, giving camouflageurs a theoretical 18 points to make hay. Camo cover will be hard to come by, but my suggestion would be to look for a small but perfect ABC pattern amidst the panic and confusion that is certain to attend a breakout above the 1318.25 peak.

The first remedial session for Hidden Pivot scholarship winners will follow the regular weekly tutorial class this morning.  All who are registered for the weekly class are invited to stick around, and to sit in on the lesson, which will focus on questions posed by the scholarship students.  A recording of this session and all forthcoming sessions will be available to those who are registered for the Wednesday class.

We’re not keen on market alerts, dear readers, because you probably have far too many of them to sift through already, each with a different and sometimes deliberately outrageous point of view. Even so, we should like to caution you that recent, coincident tops in Comex Gold and the S&P 500 are best not ignored. Although we remain bullish on both of these vehicles, you can infer that the yellow flag is out. This means that bullion and the broad indexes will be receiving more scrutiny than usual in the days and weeks ahead, so that Rick’s Picks subscribers will be better prepared to dodge the avalanche that is increasingly a possibility. Our specific predictions, disseminated to subscribers in the form of daily “Trading Touts,” had called for a shortable top at 1316.75 in the E-Mini S&P, and at 1681.50 in Comex March Gold. In the actual event, the recent high in Gold occurred at 1681.80, three ticks from our target; and in the E-Mini at 1318.25, six ticks from our target. These targets were derived from our proprietary Hidden Pivot Method, and although they are intended for traders, they can also be quite useful for purposes of forecasting. In this case, if the E-Mini S&P were to rip through the recent high within the next day or two, it would imply that bulls have the power to drive stocks significantly higher. Any sign of this would shift our attention toward a 13085 Hidden Pivot target identified earlier for the Dow Industrials. That’s 409 points above current levels – a good week on Wall Street, although it could take a bit longer, or even abort, if Europe’s financial problems return to prominence in the news. Why "Abort"? Why "abort"? For starters, euroheadlines such as yesterday’s – that Greece and its