The stock market’s sociopathic behavior seemed to ebb slightly on Friday, starting with a half-hearted short-squeeze rally that petered out mere minutes after the opening bell. DaBoyz goosed the Dow for 160 points in the early going, but by late in the day their too-easily-won gains had mutated into a telling, 30-point loss.  Not exactly the kind of number you want in the weekend headlines if you are in the delusionally bullish camp. But the bulls needn’t have worried -- as when have they ever? -- since a flurry of short-covering in the final hour pumped the Indoos back up to a 60-point gain. The network-news ninnies must have breathed a sigh of relief at that point, knowing that Friday’s obligatory eight-second sound-bite concerning the stock market would not be fraught with the enigmatic naughtiness of a key-reversal day.

The day should have held few surprises for Rick’s Picks subscribers, since most of the issues analyzed in Friday’s touts performed pretty much as expected.  Research In Motion, for  one, took a $13 point dive after a final, powerful lunge to within 27 cents of a 124.73 Hidden Pivot target broached here earlier in the week. We  couldn’t claim to have gotten short at the top, though, since RIMM hit our target in the dead of night. Although we occasionally provide detailed trading instructions for night owls when off-hours opportunity beckons, in this case we had dozed off ourselves as RIMM stole up on the target after midnight.

The Dollar Index danced to our tune as well, leaping past a Hidden Pivot resistance to achieve the next, a predicted 76.06. A slight overshoot of that target has bullish implications going forward, although we can’t claim to know why the dollar should be rallying at all, if not for purely technical reasons.  On another front, Gold unfortunately moved according to forecast, although it did not fall quite so far as the November 20 low, 780.50. We are counting on a show of support there but would rather see the February Comex contract get out of jeopardy by creating a bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart.  Just how it could do so is spelled out in Monday’s touts, so have a look if you want to know exactly what outcome to root for.