Thursday, April 17, 2014

GDXJ – Junior Gold Miner ETF (Last:34.44)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

Sellers have dominated for a month, and they are probably not finished. The 33.76 target is just a tad lower than the one posted here previously and should be used as a minimum downside objective for the near term. The good news is that you can back up the truck if and when GDXJ gets within a dime of the target, which it will.  Also, you can short 36.46 if it is reached first on a dead-cat bounce. This should be done via 'camouflage', since this midpoint pivot may not show the kind of precise stopping power that I expect at 33.76.  If and when that last number is reached, it will be more than a mere correction from the mid-March high; rather, it will be a full-blown bear-market, since the selloff would amount to 27% at that point. ______ UPDATE (April 21, 1:04 p.m. ET):  Having fallen by nearly 8% since I aired the forecast above, GDXJ this morning has bounced 42 cents from within a single penny of the 33.76 target. If you got long near the bottom, please let me know in the chat room so that I can establish a tracking position for your further guidance.  Please note that the bounce offers no guarantee of an end to this vehicle's nasty bear market, only a very low-risk spot to try bottom-fishing.  If the support is decisively breached, however, it would put into play a downside target that is going to shock some of you. Check my 12:52 post in the chat room for the precise number, which I will disclose in the touts section at a later date. _______ UPDATE (2:59 p.m. EDT): Since numerous fills were reported in the chat room, I'll establish a tracking position of 200 shares with a cost basis of 33.58.

ESM14 – June E-Mini S&P (Last:1850.50)

– Posted in: Current Touts Rick's Picks

The bearish impulse leg that bottomed on Monday at 1803.25 was a strong one (see inset), having exceeded no fewer than three prior lows, two of them 'external', on the daily chart.  A retracement is overdue, and I would be very surprised if the futures were to first rally above Thursday's 1867.50 high.  Whatever happens, we should pay very close attention to sellers' next encounter with a midpoint-pivot support on this chart, since its serious breach would suggest that the long-term bull market is either waning or over. Assuming Wednesday's 1857.00 peak endures as a short-term top, buying at the implied midpoint pivot at 1824.25 would become a very enticing speculation.  Please note as well that an 1840.75 print (i.e., the green line)  would trip a short to at least 1824.25.

Ukraine Shmookraine, Says Wall Street

– Posted in: Free Rick's Picks

Let me repeat this: The crisis in Ukraine isn't even a blip on Wall Street's radar. What does Morgan Stanley's trading desk care if Putin annexes all of Ukraine?  The crisis is just an annoyance, as far as U.S. hedge funds and portfolio managers are concerned, and most Americans -- i.e., Jerry Springer idiots who can't even name America's first three Presidents or locate Tennessee on a map -- simply don't care.  Even if there were something the U.S. or Europe could do about it, does anyone actually think Obama -- or Merkel -- would try?  For his part, Putin probably thinks, and not without good reason, that he could annex Germany at this point without a shot being fired.  Gold bugs seem to be hoping that civil war in Ukraine will drive bullion quotes higher. Get real!  The last time the sociopaths, paper-shufflers and bunko men of the investment world even pretended to care about geopolitical news was in 1968, when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia.  These days, Wall Street is bound to shrug off any crisis short of nuclear war, then return to its sordid business-as-usual as soon as the story drops off the front page.

SIK14 – May Silver (Last:19.640)

– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks

Occasionally there are trade set-ups so perfect that you feel like they can't miss. That was the case in Silver futures yesterday, when the ABC-type correction (see inset) bounced from a 'Hidden Pivot' support as pretty as they come.  The trading 'tout' I sent out the night before anticipated the bounce very precisely -- so precisely, in fact, that I'd suggested getting long with a 19.335 bid and a stop-loss just three ticks below it (equivalent to 1.5 cents). In the actual event, the futures fell to 19.325, two ticks beneath the bid, ensuring that anyone who followed my tout exactly would have gotten filled on the order. The May contract then trampolined 48 cents higher overnight. If you'd bought as advised and cashed out at the top, your gain would have been $2400 per contract.  The 19.320 stop-loss would have subjected you to initial theoretical risk of just $75. (I say 'theoretical' because one cannot always bail out of a position on the terms one desires.  That is one of the risks of the game.) Commodity trading can be risky, of course, and there are no assurances that future trades offered here will work out as well as this one. Could you have done the trade yourself?  Here are my verbatim instructions:  "Yesterday’s dive to 19.220 found support just above January’s 19.030 low, but the subsequent bounce is as yet insufficient for us to conclude that the worst is behind.  The very lesser charts would turn short-term bullish today on a print at 19.675, but anything shy of that should be regarded as shorting opportunity.  All that aside, night owls could attempt bottom-fishing at p=19.335 with a stop-loss as tight as three ticks (see inset, a new chart)." So confident was I in this trade that I also spotlighted