September 2009

The December contract will have a chance to turn from a minor midpoint support at 16.025, but if it doesn't, look for the slide to continue to at least 15.795, a Hidden Pivot you can bottom-fish with a stop-loss as tight as three ticks.  Both of those numbers are tied to minor patterns, but a larger one hints of selling all the way down to 15.445 (subject to a possible bounce along the way from 15.930). _______ UPDATE: The futures bottomed at 15.760, three-and-a-half cents below our target and low enough to trigger the tight stop-loss advised.

Goldman has taken a nasty dive from a peak that fell more than $4 shy of a potentially important rally target we were focused on. No one ever said it would be easy to short the little sonofabitch, but we'll keep trying. Just so you know what the incentive is, if you'd bought some October 170 puts for 1.40 when the stock was topping last week, you could have cashed them out for as much as 3.55 on Friday, two days later.

There are too many enticing downside targets at the moment to pick just one, but they'd all become moot if the futures were to reverse from the least important of them, _____,  producing a bullish impulse leg on the lesser charts.  A tiny peak at _____ will serve just fine to tell us when this may have occurred.

We hold 200 shares with an adjusted cost basis of 16.73. Shorting some option premium against them on the last run-up might have been warranted, but having missed the opportunity, we can take encouragement from the fact that Friday's high slightly exceeded the look-to-the-left peak at 19.46 recorded on the way down a day earlier.

Gold's two setbacks this year have averaged about 12%, which would imply a pullback to around $940. Would that be so bad? In any event, my worst-case correction target for the near term is _____, predicated on a breach of that Hidden Pivot support's midpoint sibling at _____. Friday's low exceeded the midpoint by just one tick, so we should view it as still intact. As always, interaction with these pivots will be the key to gauging the strength of the downtrend.  Alternatively, we should set the bar at _____ to alert us to a decisive, bullish turn on the hourly chart. 

The Dollar Index on Friday ended the day with a bounce from the exact midpoint support of the pattern shown in the chart. It would need to rally today to at least _____ to suggest bulls are back in charge. At that point they would be presumed capable of propelling DXY to as high as _____. Key resistance on the way up would come at _____.

Fasting and prayer for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonment, begin Sunday at dusk.  In observance, I will not be updating touts or commentary for Tuesday, although the chat room will be open as usual.  To those of you who observe Yom Kippur, may you have an easy fast.

[We often feature the work of our friend and colleague Chuck Cohen, a NYC-based investment consultant who specializes in mining companies. Below, he explains why it is time for those who have been straddling the fence to buy junior gold shares.  He concludes with two specific recommendations that trade over-the-counter for less than $1.] Rick has asked me to write about gold with a focus on the junior mining companies, so here we go, along with a couple of specific recommendations. I tried to point out the pros and cons of buying the juniors last month, but let me now make a quick refresher. I also suggest that you go back to Rick’s August archives to review my articles on gold and the junior sector. Advantages of juniors… – They have been beaten down in price due to the credit squeeze last year.... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** [Rick has been under the weather with a possible case of food poisoning. Filling in for him today is Chuck Cohen, a financial consultant whose work will be familiar to many of you. The following appeared at LeMetropole.com over the weekend. Chuck thinks that as long as the news media continue to stumble around in the dark in their coverage of the gold world, we should remain confident about accumulating more bullion and precious metal shares for the long haul. RA] It took a mix of $1000 gold, the media’s reaction to it, and a very fallow day to compose this piece. As serious as the news is these days, it is still difficult not to see the absurdity in what is unfolding. Now that gold has finally pierced $1000, I had expected to find repentance and mea culpas by a news media that has persistently resisted and even

Since crude has led gold lower we should pay heed to the fact that the damage to its daily chart in the last week-and-a-half has already exceeded the carnage in gold thus far, exceeding three prior peaks, including the July 29 low.