Comex Gold Closing on a Crucial Target

The yellow flag is out for two popular trading vehicles that Rick’s Picks tracks closely – Comex Gold and the E-Mini S&Ps.  Is a major top in the offing?  We’d say the odds are against it for stocks, since there is little evidence that the promiscuous Fed easing that has pumped the stock market full of hot air is going to end, even if it is officially slated to do so in June. In any event, we’ve told subscribers to expect a peak of at least tradable significance in the June Mini-S&P contract at exactly 1371.00. We routinely identify such peaks, and provide detailed recommendations for getting short at each, although we don’t do so with the expectation of catching the exact high of the Mother of All Bear Rallies. You might just as well bet on a 30-to-1 horse that hasn’t finished in-the-money for two years.  Because the stock market has been chugging relentlessly higher since March 2009, “picking the top” is never going to be an odds-on bet.  That is not to say that picking “a top” is particularly difficult, as our subscribers would readily attest. In practice, we always advise taking a partial profit if the pullback we expect from a Hidden Pivot rally target is generous enough to allow it.  Traders invariably make better decisions once they’ve taken some of the house’s money off the table, and that is why we try to take partial gains, however small, when a trade goes our way. This also allows us to widen the stop-loss on whatever position remains — and, in theory, to come out of the trade with a small profit even when we are wrong about the bigger picture.

Concerning Gold, minor, technically-derived targets have kept us quite bullish the whole way up. But the most immediate such target is not a minor one. Rather, it is a major “Hidden Pivot” that has been nearly three months in coming, and it sits fully $200 above the “ideal” price where long-term bulls might have gotten long or augmented an existing stake.  The target was disseminated a while back to subscribers, but if you don’t subscribe and would like to know exactly where the potential danger-spot lies, click here for a free trial subscription to Rick’s Picks. It will give you access not only to all of our forecasts and recommendations, but to a 24/7 chat room that draws veteran traders from all over the world.  You’ll also be able to participate in the occasional virtual trading sessions that we offer online, wherein, using the Hidden Pivot Method and “camouflage” trading technique, we look for real trades in real time.  Incidentally, we’ve also identified a rally target in Silver with the potential to slow down the metal’s rampage, if not reverse it.  We never chisel these targets in stone, however, and if they are exceeded, we infer not that the target itself was “wrong,” but that the underlying trend is so powerful that it is likely to continue at least to the next, major Hidden Pivot target.

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  • John Jay May 2, 2011, 7:10 pm

    Just saw a Bloomberg headline for a story on Charlie Munger.
    Berkshire holds 5 billion dollars worth of GS options.
    All the wealth in higher, tighter, righter hands.

  • Terry S May 2, 2011, 6:34 pm

    Good observations, Robert.

  • Robert May 2, 2011, 5:54 pm

    The Silver dive had nothing to do with investor selling (go look at the webstat data on Apmex and other online bullion dealers as the price plunged) and it also had very little to do with the margin hike.

    This past Thursday was first day notice into the May contract- Margins were hiked the next day, and yet there is still no metal entering the dealer inventory in sizes adequate to settle the longs who are standing.

    This pattern is the same one we’ve seen going into primary delivery months for the past 3 years, only the dollar amounts of the moves are getting more extreme, and the time to recover is getting shorter, and the COMEX reported inventories are shrinking ever closer toward zero ounces.

    Even rollover data is telling- very few longs are rolling to the least expensive forward months (as used to be the pattern way back in 2009 and earlier). With Silver in backwardation there are some pretty tasty price quotes out there in the 2012 delivery months.

    Instead, they are rolling most often into the next delivery month.

    Silver backwardation, combined with the ever increasing margins suggests to me that the paper proxy for real metal trade is in serious jeopardy. It’s all meant to chase the speculators out of the market, but in all the bull markets in history, how many times have exposed shorts ever successfully chased the speculators away from the trade after the blood is in the water?

    I can’t think of a single time.

    I note that silver just painted 47 again- that’s an 80% re-trace of the ground lost just 12 short hours ago.

  • roger erickson May 2, 2011, 2:40 pm

    ps: last night Comex announced higher margin requirements for silver; what’s the correlation with bin Laden?

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-02/silver-futures-drop-13-on-investor-sales-as-cme-boosts-margins.html

    • Steve May 2, 2011, 4:12 pm

      Lawlessness

  • roger erickson May 2, 2011, 2:23 pm

    Interesting call on mkts & metals, Rick.
    Have to stay nimble & out of harms way since mkts are so easily manipulated. The legal commentary below puts a lot of things in perspective, & explains much of how & why our economic base is “legally” committing suicide. The comments too are telling.

    My Class, right or wrong: the Powell Memorandum’s 40th Anniversary
    http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-class-right-or-wrong-powell.html

    • John Jay May 2, 2011, 2:55 pm

      Great article in that link about corporations and their game plan.
      Well, they pulled it off, and now America is run by the Corpleone Crime Family.
      And just like the family in the “Godfather”, they have all the judges and politicians in their pockets.
      They can loot, steal, and run their country into the ground with no consequences except obscene profits for them.
      The Federal government has become the “muscle” for the Corpleone Crime Family, and even enables their schemes. Look at the housing fraud: repeal Depression era banking regulations and enable MBS, create MERS, the Fed goes to ZIRP, present the 250k/500k tax free capital gains plan, encourage NINJA loans and let the Corpleone Crime Family game that racket all the way up and down.
      With a 1% Corpleone Crime Family tax rate, or like GE, no taxes at all.
      Stick the taxpayers with the bill, and don’t prosecute the perps. Now even the Supreme Court is ruling in favor of the “Family” more and more.
      Class action lawsuits are on their way out, the Corpleones can bribe their politicians with unlimited campaign “contributions”, vaccine manufacturers can’t be sued, etc.
      Corpleone mega-mergers are fostered by the Federal government, and the Anti Trust laws are ignored.
      Look at Wal Mart, the banking industry, cell phone carriers, the MIC, etc.
      Look at NAFTA, GATT, etc., all dealt with foreign countries and were Treaties, not “Agreements”, and not to be passed by a simple majority in the Senate.
      Not a peep from the Supreme Court, was there?
      The timeline in that article certainly fits with the destruction of the middle class.

    • Robert May 2, 2011, 6:17 pm

      That is indeed a great article.

      It tap dances around some fundamental points; ie- that CEO’s will never get prosecuted because the letter of the law is always defensible, and judges no longer enforce the essence of the law.

      Regardless, anyone who believes that markets are self regulating (if remarkably slow in so being), then the corporations will lose.

      Within corruption and evil are born the seeds of their own destruction. Nothing new under the sun

      It’s too bad that the legal system could lubricate this process and get the markets back to more “normal” unruliness, but they are unfortunately in bed with the big corporations on the wrong side of the trade…

      Roger- Why do I buy Precious Metals? Now you know.

      A person has to draw some sort of line somewhere, and for me, PM’s represent the line of honest money.

  • ExNav May 2, 2011, 6:53 am

    Looks like the Navy SEALS bagged bin Laden tonight. Which quarterdeck gets to display his shrunken head?
    Good work boys. Hooyah

    &&&&&&

    Too bad we’re too civilized to shrink his head and put it on display… RA

  • GlennH May 2, 2011, 6:37 am

    Rick nice touts tonights. Timing is about right as I have no short positions left 🙂

  • Terry S May 2, 2011, 3:17 am

    Hello Rick, How was the game? (any wagers?) …well, we certainly blew through your minimum downside target for Silver with a vengeance! Great buying opportunity for those awaiting the Asian market opening: I can’t decide if this is a ‘healthy correction’ or another orchestrated takedown. Judging from the blowback buying and the ‘over the cliff’ graph after opening, I’d say the latter. Love those touts!

    • Rick Ackerman May 2, 2011, 9:20 am

      Worst Rockies game I’ve seen in a long time. The pitching sucked, and Jimenez’ ERA went above 8. Tulo popped out with two men on base, later hitting into a double play to end the game. The temperature was in the low to mid-50s, so every would-be home run ball died 40 feet shy of the fence. The hot dogs and beer, as always, were great.

  • PhotoRadarScam May 2, 2011, 2:42 am

    May is going to be VERY good for the SP500. I’m looking for mid 1400’s this month or early June.