Rick’s Picks subscribers who kept their Bulletin Launchers open yesterday received a timely morning update for the S&P futures that could have made one’s day. The mini-contract had just breached a hidden-pivot support at 1168.50, and although the low then was just a single point beneath the pivot, the slight breach of the pivot tipped us off that even lower prices were imminent. Here’s the actual bulletin:

The S&P futures have exceeded by a single point a minor hidden-pivot support at 1168.50, implying that still lower prices lie ahead. A rally to as high as 1174.75 is possible first, and you can short it with an 1174.75 offer, stop 1176.25. The stop is wider than we usually use, but I cannot improve on it since we are effectively trying to short a topping range near a pivot, rather than the pivot (1174.63) itself. Mark this order good till 1 p.m. EDT.

In the actual event, the mini-contract rallied to exactly 1174.75, where it made its intraday high before taking the 9-point drop that occupied traders for the remainder of the session. 

One Tough Market

The foregoing illustrates how difficult it is for traders to make money in what has been an increasingly tedious and range bound market. For even if you’d had absolute faith in my swing points and caught the day’s two most important moves perfectly, you still would have made only $750. That’s not a bad day’s work, I grant you, but considering that it would have required perfect executions at precisely predicted turning points, it’s asking a bit much. Anyone who can pick the horses that accurately – I surely can’t, as you learned on Saturday – probably works only one or two days a week at most; and not at a desk like you and I, but basking in pleasant climes  of some race track where it’s always 74 degrees and sunny.

And did I get a piece of the action myself, you ask? Not a cent. Unfortunately, while all of you bulletin-driven, fortune-seeking crazies were raking in $150 an hour for just a few, fleeting moments of genuine anxiety, I was occupied on the telephone with problems that were costing me nearly that much to remedy. Given my druthers, I’d sooner be clockin’ the fillies at Santa Anita, lunching on beer and hot dogs and puffing on ten-inch Cohibas all day long. Sound like anyone you know?