Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Early Tuesday night, there was only faint movement in Gold and the E-Mini S&Ps. The latter appears to have bears on the ropes, and night owls are therefore encouraged to exploit whatever 'camo' opportunities emerge as the evening wears on. Regardless, and as noted in today's ES tout, nothing should be attempted if the futures do not pull back in a way that meets our criteria for a proper recharge.

Nearly three weeks of extremely tedious sideways action argues against paying March Silver close heed right now. I would nonetheless call your attention to the "bastard" downtrend visible on the hourly chart.  It projects to 32.755, predicated on a decisive breach of the 33.395 midpoint. Yesterday's 33.255 low may have been decisive enough, so be prepared for more weakness today. The target should not be considered precisely reliable for bottom-fishing, however, since the very sausage-y point 'B' makes the would-be impulse leg illegitimate. Camouflageurs can try it nonetheless, provided initial theoretical risk per contract is held to $60 or less.  Click here for details concerning the upcoming Hidden Pivot Webinar, where you can learn to do this stuff yourself.

A 1713.00 target flagged here yesterday came within a less than a dollar of nailing the intraday low.  The impulsive rally that followed remains viable but only barely, since the rally retraced almost down to the point 'A' of the pattern.  Bulls will retain the edge if the futures can pop above the 1737.30 'external' peak recorded last Thursday, but if it fails we should brace for more slippage to the 1686.30 target of the corrective pattern shown. Regardless, its 1710.80 midpoint support looks like it will be a good place to try bottom-fishing. Camouflage is preferred, using an 'X' trigger that would subject you to theoretical risk of no more than 0.70 per contract.  However, the pattern is sufficiently attractive that you can simply put up a 1710.80 bid, stop 1710.30, if you are not comfortable with the technique of 'camo' trading. _______ UPDATE (11:20 a.m. EST): A pop this morning to 1739.20 has made the futures bullishly im[pulsive on the hourly chart.  Camouflageurs should look to leverage the 'X' entry point of the pattern A=1725.40 (9 a.m.); B=1739.20 (10:00 a.m.); and C=1729.10.  A lower 'C' would invalidate the trade, but I'd suggest using the 1-minute chart to find a new one if necessary.

I put out a trade recommendation in the chat room yesterday to take advantage of a crystal-clear correction target at 1337.25. Alas, the futures trampolined from 1337.50 -- and did so with such ferocity that even on the one minute chart there were no easy handholds for attempting a camouflage entry. The rally racked up a 10-point gain in mere minutes, recouping losses that had taken nearly seven hours to accumulate.  As of around 7 p.m. EST, there was almost no pullback in after-hours trading, a fact that made bears' distress all too apparent.  They're not likely to get much slack as the night wears on, and so Rick's Picks night owls should seize any opportunity that comes, predicated on a B-C pullback that meets our criteria (see inset). Want to learn how to nail price reversals like a pro?  You can learn to do it in as little as six weeks. Click here for information about the upcoming Hidden Pivot Webinar and receive a $50 discount.

Chalk up a frustrating day for traders who came to their monitors yesterday with nothing in their quivers save Hidden Pivots and a winning attitude. There are days when our technical runes warn us not to expect much in the way of opportunity, and yesterday was just such a day. We should have known as much before we let the stock market put us in a trance during the second half of what was to become a tediously meaningless session. An hour earlier, during a weekly tutorial session held online for graduates of the Hidden Pivot Course, there were technical signs all over the charts suggesting that we might better use the remaining hours of the day by going fishing. And we don’t mean bottom-fishing as traders, but rather, fishing for trout or salmon -- or even for bass, assuming one would be so foolish as to risk making an otherwise pleasant outing in a Boston Whaler as frustrating as one spent waiting to pull the trigger on a trade.  (Yes, we do give the bass in particular credit for being smarter than most of us. But other traders?  They are mostly – and fortunately for us -- headless chickens, and if you can’t out-think them on a given day, it’s probably time to seek another line of work.) Anyway, over the next couple of hours, the market delivered on its technical promise to be as boring as possible, and so it went -- until exactly 3:35 p.m. EST. That’s when one of our favorite trading vehicles, the E-Mini S&Ps, exploded with the spike that you see in the chart.  This wilding spree came as no surprise to us, having been precisely anticipated in the Rick’s Picks chat room via the following recommendation at 2:29 p.m. “ES double-D pivot at

From the peerless 'Spengler,' here's an excerpt from his provocative essay, titled above: “The psychology profession, by contrast, thinks that the brain is a machine, and the best way to engage it is to use another machine, namely a computer. Computers, to be sure, do not kill brains; people kill brains with computers. Computers in the hands of people who believe that gratification is the highest human goal, and the quicker the gratification, the better, have devastated our mental landscape. Our children do not read; they only surf. They do not write; they only text. They do not plan and strategize in games; they react to visual and aural stimuli while inflicting simulated mayhem. They do not follow a plot: they cut among disjoined images in the style of rap videos. And when they fail to concentrate, we give them Adderall and Ritalin.” Click here to read the entire essay.