August Gold is in its umpteenth straight day of a tedious consolidation. The pattern shown does not look like it could conceivably produce any result other than a new rally leg, but it's obviously not going to happen on our schedule. The patient camouflageur will be rewarded when the opportunity finally comes, but it will require rapt attention each day to charts of 15-minute degree or less. Upside potential is to the 1334.90 midpoint pivot shown but any higher would indicate 1364.30, its 'D' sibling.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Target Practice in the E-Mini S&Ps
– Posted in: Free Rick's PicksI have posted a target and coordinates for the E-Mini S&P in the chat room Sunday night for two reasons: 1) it will provide us with a precise, high-opportunity spot to get short, as well as a minimum upside target for getting long in the meantime. As has been my practice lately, I haven't displayed the target publicly because I don't want to jinx it or diminish its value to paying subscribers; and 2) my mickeymouse WordPress publishing tool is not allowing me to publish new touts for Monday, nor even to display old touts. With any luck, webmaster Brian will have fixed this unprecedented disaster by the opening.
Fatigued Stocks Flirt with the Big One
– Posted in: Commentary for the Week of March 8 FreeThe suspicion grows that the stock market has been carving out a broad top, by turns bringing sufficient deviousness, pain, tedium, exhilaration, temptation, and most of all false hope, to the process that even those who have been preparing for it are likely to be caught off guard when the inevitable plunge comes. Further evidence of a market suffering from terminal fatigue would have been apparent to anyone who tried to cash in on the last gasp of put and call options that were due to expire on Friday. We’ve been using this tactic ourselves with a weekly “Jackpot Bet” designed to take advantage of the enormous leverage in options that have shed nearly all of their time premium shortly before they die. Stripped bare for action, they can increase in value tenfold if the underlying stock exhibits just a little bit of Friday craziness. Unfortunately, Friday nuttiness has been nowhere in sight for weeks, requiring us to scramble just to break even on the relatively feeble moves that have occurred. Last week, for instance, a bullish play in Google caught our attention, and we bought calls with a 565 strike price to take advantage of a fall in the stock to 559 in the early going. At that point, a mere $6 rally in five hours was all it would have taken to push calls we’d bought for 0.30 into-the-money. Google can easily do that in mere minutes when it catches fire, and if it had happened this time, our bet would have tripled with each $1 move above 565. Alas, the stock spent the entire session unable to levitate itself above 565. Actually, it finally did pop above the “jackpot threshold,” but it happened literally at the final bell, when it was too late to reap the kind
