Newmont has been good to us in the past, so we’ve been on the lookout recently for a good spot to re-enter the stock. You may recall that we exited a small position in January near $60, reaping a trading gain of $3,620. Alas, with the stock down by nearly $10 a share since them, it is evidently still not a buy, not quite. As much was evident yesterday when we tried to catch the falling piano at 50.37, an enticing hidden pivot support. The recommendation was disseminated via the Rick’s Picks “bulletin launcher” intraday, prompted by a query from a subscriber who was just as eager as we are to buy the stock.

Fortunately, we did so with a 4-cent stop-loss, removing ourselves from harm’s way when NEM failed to bounce from the pivot. In fact, the stock exceeded the 50.33 stop-loss by a whopping 13 cents, strongly implying that it will now fall to the next, at least – 49.08 – before it has a chance of finding traction. Today’s “Touts” provides a detailed strategy for bottom-fishing, since 49.08 looks like a more felicitous spot to initiate a long position than the pivot we used yesterday. Even so, judging from the way NEM squashed the lesser support at 50.37, we should be as careful as always in trying to pick a bottom. Incidentally, my worst-case low for the near-term is 48.63, give or take the usual farthing or two.

Caution is also warranted as we try to pinpoint tradable tops in some stocks that look, well, toppy. In the case of one of them, IBM, we bailed out of a small put position yesterday for a modest profit. This was not because the stock looks unlikely to reward us, but because the mere waiting was growing quite tedious. However, we still hold puts in Merrill Lynch, and while we narrowly missed taking a 100% profit on half of them yesterday, there is reason to be confident that we will get our price before the week is out. If so, we’ll still hold ten of the puts without cost – about as much as one can afford to pay for them, considering that stocks have been mostly on the rise for...centuries.