Tuesday, December 3, 2013

ATUSF – Altius Minerals (Last:14.2439)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

At the Mining & Minerals Conference that I attended last week in San Francisco, I found Altius still to be high on the list of many savvy investors. With $130 million cash in reserve and a royalty stream that nicely offsets fixed outlays of $5 million per year, the company is well positioned to ride out whatever further pain bullion's bear market inflicts on investors.  Altius is waist-deep in iron ore investments these days, causing some to remark that bullion is no longer much of a concern to the company. This is an exaggeration, but investors should be happy in any case that the firm is doing what it takes to survive gold's fall from $1900 to a recent $1220. From a technical standpoint, the stock has been in a holding pattern centered on a $9-$11 range for more than three years. The weekly chart shows 'dueling impulse legs', implying that the tedious battle between bulls and bears could continue for yet some time, perhaps with an exhaustion skew down to $8 or a little lower.  At that price, especially considering Altius' enviable cash position, the stock would represent a back-up-the-truck buying opportunity. _______ UPDATE (December 31): The stock has exploded in the last week (see inset), up nearly 20% from lows made just two weeks ago. The so-far high is 11.74, but with a Hidden Pivot target at 12.24, the move may still have legs. It is already impulsive, so the pullback of the last several days should be regarded as a buying opportunity. _______UPDATE (January 6, 10:22 p.m. EST): Today's explosive rally has pushed the stock to a 17-month high. There are no crystal-clear patterns to allow a precise reckoning of where Altius is headed, but my guess is to at least 14.33 over the near term. A

What We’re Worried About, Supposedly

– Posted in: Free Rick's Picks

Hard to say what caused stocks to tank in the final hour. We chalked it up to forever-mysterious cosmic emanations. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, attributed it partly to "worries" about how long QE will be allowed to continue.  Someone should tell them:  Forever!  Or at least, until the epic, feather-merchant  scheme that has sustained the world's financial system collapses. In the meantime, supposed worries about the coming Fed Tapeworm deserve to be written about in The Onion, not The Wall Street Journal. We should be spending our time in other pursuits, such as thinking up a nickname for Janet Yellen. Would 'Easy Janet', an homage to 'Easy Al' Greenspan, be sexist?

ESZ13 – December E-Mini S&P (Last:1800.25)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

The chat room has been deader than Kelso's nuts lately, but that doesn't mean it has been bereft of trading opportunities. Yesterday, for instance, for any subscriber who was awake at his console, I put out a trade in the final minutes of the session that could have been worth as much as $225 per contract on $25 of theoretical risk.  The trade was a winner for anyone who followed this simple instruction (lifted verbatim from a post at 3:52 p.m. EST):  "Easy-way...is to bid 1797.25 for a single contract, stop 1796.75. You'll be on your own thereafter." As it happened, the futures bottomed moments later at exactly 1797.00, a tick below my target, and never looked back.  Four hours later, they were at 1800.50, just off a so-far recovery high of 1801.50 (see inset). Usually, when a trade requires that we catch the proverbial falling piano, I advise initiating it using the 'camouflage' technique in order to reduce risk to a bare minimum. Sometimes, though, when a price pattern is a perfectly ugly beauty like this one, I'll recommend getting aboard with a straight bid and an absurdly tight stop-loss. In this case, the stop-loss I advised lay at 1796.75, two ticks below our bid. In the actual event, the low was 1797.00, and it gave way to a bounce, still in progress as of this writing, that was good for a ride of as much as 4.50 points. Since we habitually keep risk:reward in a 1:3 ratio at all times, the two ticks theoretical that we risked at the outset implied that we could have taken a partial profit (or implemented a trailing stop on a one-contract position) once we'd racked up a gain of at least six ticks (1.50 points). _______ UPDATE (9:08 a.m. EST): The futures