LinkedIn shares have exploded in after-hours trading, up 12% to $245 on upbeat earnings news released after the bell. Like Twitter, LinkedIn is more smoke than substance. The company propagates itself virally with a clever algorithm that can ferret out people from your past that you’d long since forgotten about. Just how clever is their algorithm? So clever, I would surmise, that sooner or later it will try to network you professionally with your prom date from 40 years ago. Don’t laugh. As a LNKD member, although not a user, I’ve noticed that the company is not above stealing contact information from my Outlook address book. As a result, some of those whom LinkedIn has suggested I contact are names of people in my address book who have been dead for as long as a decade. It’s always amusing to find in my email box an invitation from one of them to re-connect.
Unlike Twitter, however, LinkedIn is making money, mainly from its recruiting business. That’s why LNKD shares have been moving higher for years while Twitter’s have been falling. From a purely technical standpoint, LNKD looks like it could hit 257.72 or even 288.44 before this short-squeeze sevens out. Both numbers are ‘Hidden Pivots’, and a rally to the lower one has effectively been clinched by the decisive move tonight past 227.01, the first in a proprietary sequence of ‘hidden’ resistance points. The graph shows the relevant rally pattern, including this evening’s explosion to a so-far high of 245.00. If the stock were to pull back to p=227.01 after putting up at least three more weekly bars above 227.01, it would become a theoretical buy there, stop 206.53. ______ UPDATE (November 11, 10:38 p.m.): Bulls should have taken some profits today, since the intraday high at 258.56 exceeded the rally target given above by 84 cents. A decisive push higher would likely clinch 288.44. If you got short, please let me know in the chat room and I’ll provide tracking guidance.