Each and every weekday evening, in the “Current Touts” section of Rick’s Picks, we publish Hidden Pivot targets and detailed strategies to guide traders and investors the following day. But it is in the chat room, in real time, and in the Intraday Notes section, that some of the most useful and valuable price forecasts often appear. Yesterday, for instance. With April Gold trading around $651,  we billboarded a rally target at 653.40.  In fact, the futures peaked shortly thereafter at 653.70 -- just three ticks, or 30 cents, above the predicted peak. Then they dove $5, to just above $648, never bettering the earlier high.

(Click on chart to enlarge)

We mention all of this in order to emphasize certain important,  practical differences between targets disseminated “the night before” and those that can be calculated in real time. The former are speculative to the extent that neither we nor anyone we know can accurately predict whether a stock, index or commodity will move higher, lower or  sideways when stocks open the next day. Indeed, it sometimes feels as though the more elaborate our strategy for leveraging a Hidden Pivot target the next morning, the more likely it is that the chosen trading vehicle will move the “wrong” way, mooting our advice and hard work.

The Good Stuff

Be that as it may, the chat room gives us an opportunity to correct obsolete forecasts in mid-course, using such real-time data as may have accumulated in the first hour or so of the trading day. By implication, the price targets sent out to you at night reflect only a small fraction of  the power of Hidden Pivot analysis. By further implication, if you tune only to the Touts section of the newsletter, you will miss out on some of the really good stuff, including illuminating asides about why one pivot may have worked while another did not; or, as was the case yesterday, a detailed discussion about managing the risk in a trade as it unfolds.

I cannot say for certain whether it is because the Hidden Pivot method is beginning to catch on with a growing audience, but the price patterns that in the past have produced the best trades for us seem to be mutating in ways that continue to challenge our ability to find them. If we used an algorithm to identify Hidden Pivots, we would doubtless have to tweak it constantly to get satisfactory results. Instead, presumably because we try to look at charts with the same subjective eye that we bring to paintings, the adaptations we are required to make require no math, only our unwavering attention to certain “classical” details. Such as? The list includes graceful sinuousness, symmetry in price and time, and price-swings that are etched with subtle delicacy by single-bar highs and lows. As one graduate of my Hidden Pivot seminar noted yesterday in the chat room, once you have taken the course, you will never again look at a chart in the same way.

***

Want to Forecast Like a Pro?

Plans for the first online Hidden Pivot seminar are nearly complete. The two-day event will be held via Webex in late March or early April, most probably on successive weekend mornings. There will also be at least one lengthy Q&A session to follow, just as there has been on Sunday afternoons to conclude the on-site course.

This will be an excellent opportunity for those of you who were unable to attend the classes I gave last year in New York, Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco and Denver. If you’ve visited the chat room and marveled at the forecasting skill of seminar grads, this seminar is designed to quickly bring you up to their level. While I cannot guarantee that the course will turn you into a fabulously rich trader,  I can promise that with a little diligence and practice, your ability to precisely predict price reversals in stocks, indexes, options and commodities will be at least as good as anyone whose forecasts you have ever paid for.

I will be able to offer this course for under  $1,000, since many of the expenses that I've incurred in holding a “live” seminar – including hotel and travel costs, and the rental of a conference facility -- will not be a factor. If you are seriously interested in attending, click here to get on the mailing list.