The thieves who manipulate this behemoth for a living partied hard in the final moments of Friday’s session, goosing MSFT $7 just ahead of the bell. Usually it is in the opening minutes of the day that we see them diligently at work, stealing hubcaps in full view of SEC regulators. Wall Street loves these guys, since they have been responsible for creating untold trillions of dollars’ worth of vaporous ‘wealth’ since the bull market began in 2009. Friday’s criminally inspired spike was relatively modest, worth approximately $7 billion to portfolios that hold Microsoft shares.

The irony is that the sleazeballs who purport to control this stock, among others, are themselves the unwitting slaves of mysterious technical forces they will never completely understand. The chart shows exactly how this works, with Hidden Pivot levels that can be used to gain a profitable edge over the riff-raff and algos. They already enabled us to get long just a hair off the September 5 low at 492.37.  More recently, the stall at 519.75, the pattern’s midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance, could have been shorted on Friday, but for the fact that it occurred on a vicious upthrust with just a few minutes remaining in the session. But there are still several potential trades that can be milked from the pattern, including a ‘mechanical’ buy on a pullback to the green line, and two potential shorts in places that Rick’s Picks subscribers will recognize. Trading should be fun — and what could be more fun than going up against machines incapable of distinguishing a chickpea from a garbanzo.  (The difference, says comedian Will Durst, is that a guy would never pay $200 to have a garbanzo sit on his chest.)