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 for the next run-up. The 188.48 rally target will remain valid provided C=159.59 is not exceeded to the downside.