June 2009

Rick's Picks has a new feature starting today: Side Bets. These are short takes on stocks, commodities, options and indexes that will presented with no charts or follow-up. They will also be visible to the public.  Side Bets will allow me to cover more issues than I could possibly track in the Touts section.

Could all of the selling be due to some flatulent antitrust probe of Google's virtual library?  Relief may be on the way in the form of a Hidden Pivot support at 424.55.

Don't pass up an opportunity to short this pup at 2.4735 if it gets there today.

Thge 151.24 target still looks like a show-stopper.  Second-wind target: 155.04.

Yesterday's high looked like a short, since it occurred a hair above a 110.14 pivot. Suggest a July 100 put for 1.00 if you don't want to spectate.

No evidence of a plunge in the offing, but were it to occur, a Hidden Pivot at 14.395 represents a great buying opportunity.  Alternatively, 15.910 is possible on a surge, subject to a possible stall at 15.605.

The 72.15 rally target proffered here yesterday would have worked for those who sought to get short, but only with diligence, since the futures' first encounter with this Hidden Pivot resistance produced some heavy chop. Now our focus will shift to a higher target at 74.47 also given here earlier. I'm going to alter it slightly, to 74.39, and recommend that you short two pennies below that number, stop 74.64. You'll be on your own thereafter, but you'd need a pullback to at least 73.64 to take partial profits or implement a trailing stop. _______ UPDATE: The most recent Thursday carried to 73.23, and although the 74.39 target above it is still valid in theory, it is no longer very compelling for trading purposes.

Hidden Pivot seminar grads should be feeling deja vu when they look at the choppy rally that has been taking the futures higher without yielding much in the way of trading opportunities.  The _____ rally target here was a "go" from 938.25, when a long entry was triggered according to our rules.  However, the subsequent swings would have eroded the patience of even the most confident bulls, since risk:reward for a buy-and-hold position has been rendered increasingly unfavorable with each gratuitous swing.  Meanwhile, I wish that I could offer night owls a succulent morsel to tide things over, but the futures have been manipulated into an extremely narrow holding pattern that yields no handholds.

A small pattern that developed during yesterday's briefing turned out to have been the best entry opportunity of the day. The subsequent rally reversed early-morning damage, but without engendering a true impulse leg on the hourly chart.  In fact, we need to drop down to the five-minute bars to find a qualifier (see inset) -- one with a 'C' low that is just a tick higher than 'A'.  That's enough to give us an uptrend to calculate, however, and a c-d midpoint at 959.00 that so far has stymied the August contract's recovery. If and when the futures get past it, we could expect the thrust to continue to at least ____.  However, if weakness prevails, a Hidden Pivot at _____ corroborates the head-and-shoulders implications noted in today's commentary.