Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Land Ho in GDXJ!

– Posted in: Free Rick's Picks

It's not very often that I put out a 'buy' recommendation in GDXJ, the Junior Gold Miner ETF, but the stock is closing on a longstanding bear-market target that looks too, too good to pass up. For explicit trading instructions and the precise location of the target, check out today's tout.  If you don't subscribe, click here for a no-risk, two-week trial subscription that will allow you a peek-and-then-some.

AAPL – Apple Computer (Last:566.53)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

Apple has been the lunatic fringe's heart-throb lately, but the institutional whack-jobs will have their hands full trying to push the stock past the 572.54 target shown, clear as it is.  In the entirely likely event they succeed, the next interesting Hidden Pivot resistance, 596.37, would make a logical minimum upside target.  Trade those numbers as they suit you, but it is at the higher where your odds will be best for getting short. Assuming you've been long for at least part of the ride there, you'll have some profits to cushion a stop-loss wider than our usual penny-ante play. ______ UPDATE (December 5, 6:58 p.m. EST): Yesterday's thrust to 575.14 was of course bullish, but because it came in the form of a vicious bull-trap squeeze on the opening bar, we shouldn't look for Apple to be bounding higher as the week draws to a close. However, if bulls appear to overcome this setback in a mere day, it would set the scene for an Apple-led blitzkrieg next week. _______ UPDATE (December 9, 11:30 p.m.): Bulls have now spent a second day recovering from the sucker punch they received on last Thursday's opening bar. The stock will be ripe for bottom-fishing at the 556.05 target shown (see inset,a new chart), a Hidden Pivot  that is especially enticing because of its location "in the middle of nowhere". Officially we'll try a straight 556.13 bid for 100 shares, stop 555.89, but camouflageurs can loosen up however they please. _______ UPDATE (December 10, 12:05 a.m.): The short-squeeze that began the day negated our very promising correction target, so we did nothing.  The fact that the intraday high failed to get past the 'external' peak shown (see inset) is short-term bearish.

ESZ13 – December E-Mini S&P (Last:1793.00)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Trading the E-Mini S&Ps used to be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, but no longer. In fact, the futures have gotten so cunning when they reverse direction that I'd all but given up on using camouflage tactics to corral them. It's not that the turns haven't been occurring precisely where they are supposed to -- just that they haven't been doing so with the kind of subtle abc patterns that yield easy 'camouflage' trading opportunities. My hunch is that this behavioral change is the result of machine trading's growing dominance. From our standpoint, the way around this problem turns out to have been so obvious that I failed to see it until recently. Very simply, we should go back to trading the E-Minis the old-fashioned way -- i.e. without camouflage. This means putting up a bid against the minor trend, which can be scary. But we can mitigate the fear factor by being especially choosy about the kinds of patterns we trade. The one shown in the inset is a case in point. It is what I like to call 'beautiful-ugly', meaning that although it is not very abc-like visually -- it's pretty gnarly, actually -- it meets our abc criteria perfectly, with a point 'B' low that has surpassed out two distinctive 'external' lows. Those who were in the chat room yesterday got a taste of the near-certitude that such price patterns can inspire.  With the futures trading around 1790.00, I stated that the E-Mini was bound for a tradable low at exactly 1785.75.  (A Tradestation quirk caused me to err by two ticks, but several chat-roomers got the 1786.25 Hidden Pivot target precisely right.)  An hour later, with the futures still noodling around a few points north of the target, I posted the following: "[The