ARCHIVED COMMENTARY
Yellow Flag Out
For Gold Bulls
For edition of May 10, 2006
Traders and investors who have been using my “hula numbers” to leverage gold’s resurgence one predictable stride at a time, please take note: The June Comex contract is stealing up on an important rally target that merits our return to caution, however briefly. The precise number is 709.50, a hidden pivot broached here earlier that has the potential to cap the bull cycle begun two months ago from around $540. There is an alternative hidden pivot at 710.50, so it is logical to expect a shortable top at one number or the other, or perhaps somewhere in-between. How much of a correction should we look for thereafter? That’s hard to say, although we should be prepared for a top of perhaps intermediate degree, meaning that the ensuing pullback could last for as long as four to six weeks.
(Click here if photo reminds you of Rembrandt's Night Watch)
Of course, there is another possible scenario – that the June futures will punch through 709.50 and head higher within hours or even minutes of first encountering it. Since my proprietary hidden pivots are not, as I like to remind subscribers, chopped liver, the breach of one, even if slight, often implies that there is still considerable buying power remaining to be spent – enough, presumably, to power gold not merely past the all time high of $850 recorded 25 years ago, but to the Katie-bar-the-door threshold of $1,000 an ounce. Could it have been only a few short years ago that the benighted Larry Kudlow, CNBC’s A-team shill for the status quo, was explaining that the Fed had gold “under control” at $310 an ounce, but that tightening might be warranted if it poked above…$330?
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Night Games
Traders who keep night hours or who live in far-flung time zones could have caught an invigorating ride in June Gold Monday night based on the recommendation below. A subscriber who did just that has a harrowing tale to tell – and it shall be told, in the fullness of Wednesday morning’s real-time Q&A session at Rick’s Picks.
$ June Gold (692.20)
05/08/2006 19:29:43 EST 5894
Here's another one for you night owls: If the futures continue to inch higher they'll generate a bullish impulse leg on the 15-minute chart at 682.60. Behavior from that point forward is rather difficult to predict at this time (i.e., 7:30 p.m. EST), but here's a hidden-pivot target that will allow you to manage risk along the way: 693.20. Consider it a lock-up if the June contract can hold above 682.50 for at least an hour after first touching it.
Update 9:48 a.m. EST: This forecast worked out nearly perfectly. The futures first hit 682.50 at 7 p.m., holding above it for the next three-and-a-half hours. Then, just before 9 a.m. EST, they took off with a $13 blast from the overnight low, touching a high of 693.50 as of 9:45 a.m. The very slight (i.e., 30 cents) overshoot of the pivot implies that the June contract is still on track to hit my Hula Number at 709.50.
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Avoid MyInks.Com
Canon, HP, Brother and other printer manufacturers recommend OEM replacement ink cartridges because, they say, third-party products contain inferior ink that will clog the print head. I’ve found this to be true, at least for my Canon, although I was able to revive my printer by repeatedly soaking the print head in denatured alcohol and running it through the deep-clean cycle a zillion times.
Whatever you decide, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of one vendor in particular, MyInks.Com, one of the largest cartridge sellers on the Web. If you order just once from them, you will get on the mailing list of their marketing director, the overbearing, loathsome “Jodie.” Jodie is as aggressive a mailer as I have ever experienced, as tenacious as a leech. Customer service is absolutely unreachable, as is a human being at MyInks headquarters in Glendale, CA. An alternative supplier, if you are not concerned about using non-OEM ink cartridges and prefer good service to bad, is Boulder-based CartridgeWorldUSA, the biggest in the business
