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The Wall Street artistes who have helped propel Facebook shares steeply higher despite an onslaught of negative news were temporarily stymied Wednesday when a damaging story broke around noon. Just when investors were starting to forget why Facebook was in danger of becoming a pariah for abusing users' privacy, out pops this headline: Millions of Facebook Records Found on Amazon Cloud Servers.  How bad is it?  "In one instance," reported Bloomberg, "Mexico City-based digital platform Cultura Colectiva openly stored 540 million records on Facebook users, including identification numbers, comments, reactions and account names. The records were accessible and downloadable for anyone who could find them online." A nearby headline framed the coming response from D.C. legislators: Facebook Crackdown Options Abound as Washington Weighs Next Move. I'd warned here recently that Facebook's virtual empire could implode overnight if users' tastes suddenly change and they abandon the social-media platform en masse. Even the rabid weasels who drive the company's shares wildly up and down for fun and profit must be sensing by now that Facebook is no longer cool (think AOL) and that the company has seriously depleted its store of good will. A sharp, downward adjustment in the stock seems likely, and they will do everything they can in the meantime to distribute their holdings to the rubes. However, there is a lot of ruin in an empire, as the saying goes, and so we shouldn't expect the stock to sink toward oblivion without a fight. Indeed, DaBoyz deftly put it in a holding pattern at 30,000 feet for two months while they waited for the most recent spate of bad news to blow over. Shameless Puffery FB appeared headed to the moon on Wednesday, but the news concerning this latest privacy breach quickly knocked it down by $5, about 3.25%. Ironically,

Although the shady business practices of Facebook and its founder have been attracting a barrage of bad press, the guys paid to keep the stock pumped have held it aloft for months. Its failure to fill a dramatic short-squeeze gap created on January 31 attests to the power these operators have to spin the news so that shorts are always on the defensive.  FB has been in a holding pattern for two months, opportunistically awaiting the mildly 'good' news that would ram it up shorts' wazoo. If it doesn't come soon, though, DaBoyz may have to bring the stock down into the gap, since accumulation at current levels is growing increasingly expensive. In any case, no matter how we might view Zuckerberg and his methods, a thrust exceeding the 174.64 midpoint Hidden Pivot shown (inset; our minimum target for now) would put a target as high as 190.00 in play. _______ UPDATE (Apr 2, 4:02 p.m. ET): After taking a powerful, 3.30% leap today, FB stalled almost precisely at the 174.64 pivot before peaking at 174.90. Let's stipulate that the stock close for two consecutive days above this number before inferring that a finishing stroke to 190.00 is a done deal.

I'd pronounced last week's selloff a fake in the last tout, but it's starting to look like the real McCoy. Monday's drubbing brought the stock down to the edge of a scary gap created on January 31, when DaBoyz leveraged a lollapalooza of fake feel-good news and bullish cyclical forces to spring a wicked squeeze on shorts. Now, everyone who has bought the stock since is facing a possible loss if FB slips below the blue line (see inset). It's hard to see how it will avoid this, so buckle up. With the stock on a precipice, puts are too pumped to pay. Stay tuned to the chat room, however, since this could change. _______ UPDATE (Mar 19, 10:32 p.m.):  Having stopped out bulls Tuesday with a dip beneath the Feb 21 low, today's rally should have been stronger. This has raised the odds of more slippage into the gap noted above. _______ UPDATE (Mar 20, 11:28 p.m.): Could this be Zuck's Last Stand? Far from slipping into the void, the stock has rocketed toward a short-squeeze trigger at 166.83. If it closes above that price we'll adjust our sights upward to a 174.06 minimum target. _______ UPDATE (Mar 21, 8:14 p.m.): Some slight changes are necessary: The bullish trigger point now lies at 167.00, where a print would put 174.72 in play as a minimum upside objective.  Here's the new chart. _______ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:42 p.m.): The buy signal noted above triggered, but I will recommend ignoring it because it feels like DaBoyz have been distributing the stock for the last month. Their hard work and deviousness is impressive, given the length of time it is taking for FB to break down. ______ UPDATE (Mar 25, 10:49 p.m.): The pop through p makes a rally to at least

Facebook's rally has the same thing going for it as Tesla's -- i.e., the stock is so easy to hate that everyone wants to be short it. Zuckerberg has figured out a way to exploit this. He showed street smarts by planting a 'bullish' story about the company's supposed new business model at the top of The Wall Street Journal's front page last week. My thoughts about this cynical distraction can be found here. Recall that Facebook and its founder were getting clobbered by bad press related to its sleazy and dishonest handling of privacy issues.  Now, with the help of a sympathetic and gullible press, he's muffled the clamor for his head. At the same time, Zuckerberg has convinced at least some investors that the company can make more money with small-group messaging, payment services and such than it currently does through advertising revenues. Not incidentally, Facebook's new 'story' will give Wall Street's shameless shills, the analysts, cover when they start hawking the stock again. From a technical standpoint, FB appears bound for the 188.48 target shown, predicated on a decisive move past p=174.04. Last week's peak occurred a hair shy of this benchmark, a fact that affirms both the pattern and its target. If the stock were to rally into our 'sweet spot' and then pull back to the green line, you should be prepared to buy there with a mechanical bid. Stay tuned to the chat room for timely guidance on this. ______ UPDATE (Mar 14, 7:51 p.m. EDT): Sellers knocked the stock down hard on news of an internet outage and the departure of a key executive. Although the recent top was just pennies from where we'd expected (see above), the selloff is a fake -- a shakedown that will allow DaBoyz to accumulate more shares

Although the stock appeared to be setting up a juicy 'counterintuitive' short a couple of weeks ago, it has yet to trigger. Instead, FB has worked its way lower in fits and starts, diminishing the 'surprise factor' that makes CI trades so appealing. I doubt that sellers are spent, given the stock's punk performance on Friday when many stocks soared. However, I am no longer recommending the short trade, even as FB falls deeper into the gap created on January 31, when it was goosed mightily on strong earnings news. Since my long-term outlook for Facebook remains bearish, we will continue to look for opportunities to profit from its decline. We might even do some bottom-fishing if the trade sets up well. In any case, stay tuned._______ UPDATE (Feb 21, 6:14 p.m.): Today's sinkage triggered the 'counterintuitive' short at 160.31, putting p=148.15 in play as a minimum downside objective. We'll remain spectators for now, since the stock is very oversold and could pop at any time.______ UPDATE (Feb 25, 6:16 p.m.): Perhaps inspired by the successful distribution of AAPL shares, DaBoyz are working Facebook hard, moving it against a tide of negative news that eventually will send the stock below $100. They goosed it today strongly enough to leave shorts on the hook at the close. Let's see how much higher the smart guys can waft this brick. _______ UPDATE (Feb 28, 10:08 p.m.): The smart guys have been unable to elevate the stock, which now looks bound for at least 158.28 (60-min, A=165.69 on 2/26). _______ UPDATE (Mar 4, 9:43 p.m.): Give them their due, the smart guys got Facebook to swim against the tide today, tripping a theoretical 'buy' signal in the process. This means we should use p=174.11 as a minimum upside objective for now._______ UPDATE (Mar

Facebook's crazed leap last week died within a hair of the 171.25 target (see inset) disseminated to subscribers when the stock was $20 lower. Although we followed through on a plan to buy put options when FB kissed the target, the anticipated pullback was so labored and weak that we were happy just to scratch the trade and wait for the next juicy shorting opportunity.  And it will surely come, since the company's troubles are not going away simply because earnings are still robust. The WSJ and other ray-rah news outlets tripped on themselves effusing over the record revenues announced last Thursday. But the Journal and its cheerleading cohort have a habit of focusing so intently on quarterly earnings that they often fail to see a bigger picture that in this instance portends increasingly difficult times ahead for Facebook. In case they hadn't noticed, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg is at the top of the hit-list of a growing number of critics who see social media as a bad deal for everyone but its purveyors. As one of them astutely noted, if the service is free, you are the product. Deft Evasions Zuckerberg's smarmy condescension toward critics, most memorably on Capitol Hill and in front of EU regulators, has become legendary, as have his deftly worded evasions.  The pols are so used to getting stonewalled that his bamboozling brand of doublespeak comes across as refreshing and ingenuous in comparison. He got prime space in the WSJ last week to go on the offensive with more bullshit: "We need your information for operation and security, but you control whether we use it for advertising." Yeah, sure. An apology it wasn't. Zuckerberg only apologizes when security has been breached in a big way, or when Facebook has embarrassed itself in sundry other, appalling ways.

DaBoyz have harnessed panic-stricken bears to do in minutes what bulls might not have accomplished in a month -- i.e., push a beleaguered Facebook $25 higher without wasting a dime of their own money. I doubt whether even urgent short-covering can spike the stock past the 171.25 target, but we can use it as a minimum upside target for the very near-term nonetheless. Depending on how things open, we might look at expiring puts, tightly stopped, to leverage the target.______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 11:45 a.m.): I bought expiring 165 puts for 0.35, a nickel off their low, when FB topped this morning at 171.68. Several subscribers did likewise when I flagged the opportunity in the chat room. At least one subscriber has already cashed out for a 50% gain on FB's drop to 168.56. I'm holding onto the puts myself for a swing at the fences. _______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 4:41 p.m.): As posted in the chat room at the time, I doubled out on half of the puts when FB sank minutes before the closing bell. The 0.70 I received for the puts will effectively give me a free short position when trading commences Friday morning.  In the meantime, just in case the stock unexpectedly swoons overnight, I've entered a distress bid for stock at 163.70 to lock in a profit on my options. If the order fills I'll be able to short 165 calls risklessly for good measure on the opening, leaving me with a three-sided "conversion."  Every subscriber who bought the puts reported making money on them, although it was not possible to tell how many were still holding a position overnight. If you remained short, consider the stock gambit detailed above.

The sleazeballs who manipulate Facebook shares for a living were hard at work Wednesday night, lopping more than $50 off the share price in thin, after-hours trading. Say one thing for these guys, they certainly have a knack for turning bad news into opportunity. Instead of paying as much as $218 per share toward the end of Wednesday's session, they hyper-leveraged a punk earnings report after the close to orchestrate a plunge to as low as $164. That amounts to a 25% haircut in the blink of an eye for a minuscule earnings miss, a mildly downbeat forecast for the next two quarters and subpar user growth in Q2. Ordinarily we could count on the trade-desk Svengalis to run the stock back up sellers' wazoo as soon as the latter are devastated and spent. In this case, however, the shares may need to adjust more or less permanently to certain new realities concerning the way Facebook gathers and uses information about its billion-and-a-half subscribers. Each and every one of them has the potential to be 'monetized', as we well know, but perhaps less aggressively now that Zuckerberg & Co. have come under close scrutiny by Congress and EU mandarins. Facebook is certain to face more stringent privacy rules, and so the stock is not entirely likely to recoup tonight's losses with the usual, unseemly quickness. In any case, FB will be largely untradable, other than by machines, in the days and weeks ahead as bulls and bears move back toward equilibrium._______ UPDATE (August 5, 5:08 p.m. EDT): It has taken the aforementioned sleazeballs more than a week to engineer a bottom, but by Friday it looked as though they'd finally succeeded, provoking some short-covering that has put the sold-out lows behind.  I don't have any compelling rally targets to offer

In choosing which few stocks to serve up as  'bellwethers', I've elevated Amazon above all because of the company's immense brick-and-mortar presence in the U.S. and abroad. Warehouses, delivery fleets and nearly 600,000 employees add up to a very large global operation, one that mirrors America's economy across the entire spectrum of retail consumption. Facebook, on the other hand, exists almost entirely in the cloud, with just 25,000 employees and revenues derived chiefly from advertising. But what advertising!  Zuckerberg & Co. collect the kind of consumer data on two billion users that Madison Avenue firms could only have dreamt about in their 1980s heyday. Even Google and Amazon are limited to information that is merely 'inferrable', meaning they can roughly guess our likes and dislikes by looking at our history of searches and purchases. But on Facebook, we express those likes and dislikes explicitly, allowing the company to know us very personally, and to be targeted with microprecision by Facebook's advertisers. Unlimited Growth Opportunities The foregoing explains why we should accord the same bellwether status to Facebook's shares as we do to Amazon's. Both are companies with unlimited opportunities for growth and visionary leadership. Investors see this very clearly and have bid up the stocks' respective prices to extremely rich multiples. Looking at FB's chart, it strongly implies an impending, $36 rally to at least 230.79, a major Hidden Pivot resistance. Given the way buyers recently shredded their way past the 189.91 midpoint pivot, I'd rate the stock an odds-on bet to reach the target, implying a move of nearly 20% from these levels.  If so, it should give pause to bears who think the bull market begun in 2009 is about to end. This is most unlikely as long as FB still has a substantial rally ahead of it