My comments for Monday will be brief, since I’ll be off to Denver shortly for Rick’s Picks’ first hidden-pivot seminar, at the JW Marriott in Cherry Creek. Ironically, the only fat pitch that came our way during trading hours on Friday was in the Mini-Nasdaq (NA), which spent most of the morning playing cat-and-mouse with a hidden-pivot support at 1672.00. However, I was so busy Power Pointing the action for this weekend’s presentation that I neglected to jump on the NQs for what turned out to be the best rally of the day.

That’s not saying much, as you know, since the futures traded mostly within a 10-point band -- less than a third of a moderately volatile day’s range. By way of recommendations issued Thursday night, we had short offers working at hidden-pivot rally targets in the Mini-Russell and Mini-Nasdaq. They went unfilled, though, because of the very low volatility. Another trade, a would-be short in Apple, never got close, since we were trying to buy some April 65 puts that remained too expensive throughout the day. Quite often, option premiums for near- and second-month expirations get whacked pretty hard on Fridays, but not this time.

My bias at day’s end was moderately bullish, since the news, including an attack near a Saudi oil refinery, was sufficient in theory to have rattled Wall Street. It seems clear that nothing rattles investors any more – or at least, deters the mechanical flow of money into U.S. stocks, there being so few other speculative vehicles with equal appeal. Oil quotes rose a couple of bucks and bullion prices surged strongly, but this nervousness had little apparent impact on equity shares, which remain in a warp that lies outside both time and reality.