I’d suggested keeping your Bulletin Launchers open Friday in case an opportunity popped up, but we certainly didn’t get much to work with. The day’s highlight was a soporific ride aboard the Mini-S&P in the early afternoon. The rally allowed us to exit on a trailing stop 20 minutes later with a 2.25-point gain, or about $100 after commissions. Lunch money if you live in Tokyo, London or New York. The trade had about five points of potential (i.e. $250), and one might think that’s not asking too much, even on a Friday. Don’t we wish. The day’s range was less than 10 points from low to high, and we barely had a shot at half of that after missing the low by a bit. Our bid was at a hidden-pivot support, 1213.50, but the futures never went any lower than 1215.00.

Ordinarily, a trend’s failure to reach a pivot suggests that the subsequent countertrend will be pretty robust. In this case, though, it seems that the pivot went unachieved only because sellers were feeling too punk to be combative. They sure as heck didn’t try picking on Citi.. Much as the stock had done the previous day, it stubbornly held onto a small but conspicuous gain as the Dow and S&P averages were falling moderately in the first hour. I sent out a bulletin because of this, suggesting that you prepare for a bullish turn. It arrived, as I’ve noted, but if the rally contained a surprise, it was the very feebleness of the enterprise.

I don’t often recommend buying breakouts because they tend to attract too much speculative interest; however, in this case we bought a breakout above a hidden-pivot resistance that few others could have been aware of. That fact helped us get aboard without much ado, but it also left us twiddling our thumbs for a while before the futures popped for their few measly points.