Rick Ackerman

I'm establishing tracking guidance for a short position initiated near Tuesday's 280.84 peak, since the 280.88 target I'd begun drum-rolling two weeks earlier is just too good to waste. Usually I require that at least two subscribers report having done a touted trade before I track it, but I am making an exception this time because it would seem that most of you have all but ceased using these targets, even to buy cheap puts or calls that effectively leverage the targets with entry risk held almost to nothing. Accordingly, I'll assume eight Nov 22 280 puts acquired for 0.77, where they opened (before trading down to 0.73). Half would have been covered for 1.54, leaving four with an effective cost basis of zero. We'll plan on holding them until Friday, when we can roll into the Dec 6 or 13 expiration. Incidentally and for your further guidance, the puts appear bound most immediately for 1.97, a 'D' Hidden Pivot target that is likely to be reached if p=1.53 is decisively exceeded. _______ UPDATE (Nov 20, 2:10 p.m. EST): I have closed out another 25% (i.e., two put contracts) of the position, since the puts have shot up above a 1.97 target mentioned in the Trading Room earlier today. We'll continue to hold two puts for, effectively, a CREDIT of $200 apiece. This guarantees a profit of at least $400, no matter what happens, for each eight contracts purchased initially. We'll still plan on rolling to a further-out expiration date on Friday, swinging for the fences with the contracts that remain.

Regardless of whether today's high turns out to be the mythical Mother of All Tops, it was easy money for anyone who initiated a short position in DIA as I'd suggested.  Weeks ago, Rick's Picks spotlighted what stood to be an important Hidden Pivot rally target at 280.88. When it was missed by just 0.04 points at Tuesday's high, DIA subsequently dove to 278.78, equivalent to 200 Dow points, causing near-the-money put options to at least double in price in mere hours. The DIA rally target was offered as an alternative to one at 2128.50 in the E-Mini S&Ps, since not all subscribers trade futures. The latter had already produced gains of as much as $800 per contract on Monday for subscribers who reported taking a position. This could still turn out to be a major top, but even if the highs are marginally exceeded this week, I doubt the broad averages can go much higher without a long overdue, brutal correction first. This is a logical place for it to start.

The S&P mini-futures topped three ticks from an important rally target on Monday while the Dow missed a corresponding target by less than two hundredths of a percent. Is this the Mother of All Tops? Probably not, if for no other reason that we cannot expect to nail the top of a bull market that has been making record highs for more than a decade --especially when we are fixated on a price target that has been drum-rolled here for weeks.  Even so, those who shorted the E-Mini S&Ps at their intraday high reaped instant gains and could roll up even bigger profits if the high is not breached on Tuesday. My hunch is that it will be, but that significantly higher prices over the near term are unlikely in any event until after stocks have had a painful correction. It is not merely because important Hidden Pivot targets have been reached, but also long-term trendlines that stretch back years. Together they offer resistance that seems unlikely to give way easily, even if bulls marginally penetrate them over the next few days. If I am wrong and buyers blow past these impediments as though they did not exist, you can infer that the Dow is on its way to at least 30,000, a seven percent gain from current levels and what is sure to be fist-pumped on Wall Street as a milestone.

The futures topped three ticks from a Hidden Pivot target I'd been drum-rolling here for nearly two weeks. 'Drum-rolling' would be an understatement, actually, since it was more like a public relations campaign to drive subscribers' attention to a trade that promised to effortlessly produce a low-risk winner. And so it did, even if only one subscribers -- 'Bachus' in the chat room -- reported taking action. Bachus has a very impressive track record -- not only for turning my price targets into quick cash, but for doing so with enough street smarts and brio to improve on what I've advised. Also, he often shares winning trades in a timely manner that would allow anyone in the room to follow his lead. In this case, Bachus used a corrective ABC pattern of his own to exit the position, covering the short (or at least a portion of it) exactly 1.00 point off the intraday low. Nice shootin', dude! The trade was worth $800, and it was as close to a sure thing as any you will find on the daily list of touts. If you did the trade, please do mention it in the chat room. I've marked it as "Open" for purposes of establishing a tracking position -- that's what that little plus sign (+) next to the symbol ESZ19 means -- but if no one else actually did the trade, it will be removed. If you passed it up in hopes of shorting my DIA target with put options, you're on your own, since no one in the Trading Room expressed any interest in the symbol. Despite today's bullseye, the question remains as to whether the 3128.50 target caught a major top. This was a logical place for one to occur, and that's why anyone who got short

Should we be concerned that stock-market bulls have been on a take-no-prisoners rampage, acting as though all is right with the world?  It was only a few months ago, after all, that investors were said to be deeply troubled over the prospect of global recession and dimming odds of a meaningful trade deal with China. Not that these problems, which haven't abated other than in investors' forgetful brains, much slowed the onslaught of buying. Stocks rose over the summer anyway, even as yields were falling to levels implying the U.S. would soon join Europe and China in recession.  Now, with interest rates again on the rise, the Dow Industrials and S&Ps have illogically been hitting record highs, prompting this headline in the Wall Street Journal: "Rising Yields Quiet Bond Market's Key Recession Alarm". But don't break out the bubbly quite yet. For as our friend Bob Hoye points out in his latest Pivotal Events, the fact that the yield curve is no longer inverted hardly means that the warning has gone away.  "Not likely," he notes, "as the trend to inversion and the actual inversion is a key form of speculation in the credit markets. Once done it can’t be erased and the contraction is inevitable." Bob is renowned as a diligent student of market history, and you can be certain he has not misused the word "inevitable" merely to seize our attention. He tracks data stretching back hundreds of years, and his spot-on predictions have always ranked him near the very top of economic forecasters. His chartist, Ross Clark, whom I've called the Ray Charles/Mozart of technical analysis, is no slouch either.  Both are cautious right now, with Ross noting successful tests of support by the Dow Industrials in May, August and September. However, he would regard a failure

Lest We Forget... Lest we forget how useful ‘mechanical’ trades are, we dusted off our technique during this session to consider some appealing opportunities. One in gold that filled but did not yield a result before the class ended went on to produce a profit of around $1000 per contract later in the session. It was rated ‘6.8’ – good enough to keep us occupied on an otherwise dull day. There are also some rABC trades, which nearly always seem to work. Because of this, we were particularly careful in determining on the lesser charts whether these trades had actually been do-able.

The stock's bounce from a 1447.50 correction target hit on Wednesday could have produced a gain of as much as $1000 per contract for subscribers who traded it. Those who leveraged the target appeared to have taken profits near the 1467.40 threshold where I'd said the rally would become a better bet. And so it has, mainly because the rally exceeded 1467.40 by two ticks, generating a bullish impulse leg on the intraday charts. However, the futures have made no more headway, so we'll have to wait and see what the new day brings.  The chart shows at a glance why pulls are not yet out of the woods with respect to the 1425.00 downside target. It will remain theoretically viable in any case as long as 1525.80 is not exceeded to the upside. _______ UPDATE (Nov 14, 7:49 p.m.): A timid, three-day rally has generated some minor impulse legs, but the burden of proof remains on bulls for now. The 1425.00 downside target is still a good bet to be reached, but odds would lengthen if buyers can push the futures above the 1491.10 peak shown here.

The glue-sniffers are loosely in command, driving AAPL toward a 283.97 target that has kept us from getting too bearish on the stock market.  We've used the target as a lodestone, confident that AAPL would eventually get there. And it will, perhaps sooner than we might have imagine ind after its canny handlers let it fall nearly 40% a year ago, temporarily crushing expectations .  There  were a dozen good reasons to dump the stock at the time, or so it seemed.  Apple's move into streaming content, for one. The  sector is getting very crowded, and Netflix may have upped the ante for creative talent to a level where even they won't be able to turn a profit. There are other factors working against Apple as well. The iPhone replacement cycle has lengthened because there have been fewer revolutionary changes from one model to the next. Also, competitors such as Huawei are offering comparable smartphones at significantly lower prices. Despite these negatives and many others, the stock looks hellbent on 283.97, at least.  The target is very likely to produce a tradeable pullback, which would imply that the broad averages will be falling in sympathy. For now, to leverage what remains of the uptrend, and to cushion our risk when we get short, I'll recommend buying the Dec 13/Nov 22 285 calendar spread eight times for 0.50, contingent on the stock trading 264.00 or higher, day order. If you buy it, plan on rolling the spread each Friday by covering the short calls and shorting new ones tied to the next week's expiration. If the stock continues to rise on each successive Friday between now and December 6, we will ultimately be able to take in more in premium than we have paid for the long Dec 13 calls that

Gold and silver prices look primed to turn higher after getting pounded for the last two weeks.  Does that mean stock prices, which usually move opposite bullion's, could top out at or near these levels? The chart provides good reason to think so -- or to hope so, if you believe shares are overdue for a breather. The E-Mini S&P futures will be challenged to get through the trendline shown. It comes in at around 3119 and will rise to 3125 next week. My gut feeling is that these numbers are sufficiently 'magnetic' to use as minimum upside objectives for the near term, but also as firm resistance points. Don't count too heavily on Tuesday night's full moon to reverse the bullish tide in stocks, however. According to a subscriber posting in the Rick's Picks trading room, lunar cycles correlate with reversals in gold, not shares.