Rick Ackerman

I've come to view bullion's rallies with cynical detachment, but that doesn't mean we can't exploit the gratuitous head-fakes, swoons and dives for trading purposes. The pattern shown should be up to the task, even if it failed to provide a 'mechanical' entry opportunity on either of two nasty feints to the green line.  The pattern and the technique we use to leverage it 'mechanically' are too obscure to suggest we are getting front-run. Indeed, we should infer that gold futures are simply naturally nasty because they are controlled by some of the best-connected weasels in the trading world. We won't try to short D=1873.90, only observe how well it repels buyers. ______ UPDATE (Jan 3, 10:03 p.m. EST): Much as I'd like to tune out gold, the little s.o.b. would trip a 'mechanical' buy signal if it falls to the green line (1783.20). With a stop-loss at 1752.90 and implied entry risk of around $3,000 per contract, this gambit is recommended for 'camo' experts only. To all others, I would suggest paper-trading so that you can better understand how these set-ups work. _______ UPDATE (Jan 4, 5:07 p.m.): Here's a snack-size pattern to use for targeting and trading over the next day or two. It has triggered two 'mechanical' winners, but its main value now lies in its potential to measure trend strength via price action at D=1847.00. If you've made money on the way up, the target can be shorted with a very tight 'reverse' pattern that risks no more than $200 theoretical. _______ UPDATE (Jan 6, 8:04 p.m.): Perhaps you too are tiring of gold's relentlessly annoying rallies and phony breakdowns? Does this vehicle suck, or what?

Silver looks like a slightly better bet than gold to achieve the 'D' rally target of the modest 'reverse' pattern shown. It has signaled one 'mechanical' winner on the way to 23.85, but we are more interested at this point in how strongly the Hidden Pivot resists the uptrend.  It has been tortuous and does not look powerful enough to blow through the resistance. Still, there is no reason to think this is impossible or even unlikely, so let's simply monitor the move closely and exploit it as we always do whenever the odds tilt in our favor. _______ UPDATE (Jan 3, 10:14 p.m. EST): Like February Gold, March Silver would trigger a 'mechanical' buy if it falls to the green line. The 21.40 stop-loss would make the trade equally risky, with $3,000 theoretical at stake on entry. This one, too, is therefore for experts who can pare that down to perhaps $300 per contract. Interested?  Nudge me if I'm in the chat room at post time. _______ UPDATE (Jan 6, 8:12 p.m.): Time to remove Silver from the front page?  I will do so shortly unless there's a popular uprising to save it.

I am updating DXY not because it has done anything interesting since November, but just to have the U.S. dollar on my 'new' front page. It has been locked in a consolidation pattern since then, although the year ended with an imminent but not necessarily serious breakdown.  If the correction continues, it will allow me to switch to a more regular pattern instead of the fiercely gnarly one that has informed us the last month or so. Regardless, we can continue to use D=98.00 as a minimum upside objective for the bull cycle begun in May. It is part of a much larger, bull market that started in 2014. _______ UPDATE (Jan 27, 9:04 p.m. ET): The 98.00 target is in-the-bag, so let's shift our sights upward to the 102.83 D target of this reverse pattern. You can use p2=99.43 as a minimum upside objective for the near term. ______ UPDATE (Feb 3, 9:47 p.m.): The dollar has gone into a fake death dive after rallying to within easy distance of the 98.00 target drum-rolled above.  We'll move to the sidelines for now, the better to sleep through the buck's indeterminate funk.

AAPL's megabucks sponsors had a bumpy ride last week, although you couldn't tell it from the weekly chart. It shows the stock in a placid, self-assured ascent toward the 187.93 bull-market target flagged here last week. As the week wore on, the stock was deftly used by DaBoyz in tag-team fashion to power the broad averages higher. When AAPL was getting hit, most stocks were on the rise, and vice versa. This is a very efficient way to keep the bull-market con alive, given that Apple's nearly $3 trillion capitalization can counterbalance money flows from a score of lesser, albeit highly visible, stocks.  From a technical standpoint, we should regard a pullback to p=145.52 (stop 131.38) as an excellent 'mechanical' buying opportunity, although so fetching a bargain seems unlikely. There's a lesser rally target at 172.40 that should produce a discernible pause or pullback. We won't take it too seriously, though because the weekly-chart pattern that produced it is too obvious: A=123.13 on 6/4.

The felicitously gnarly pattern that I introduced here Wednesday night worked like a dream, signaling a huge 'mechanical' winner on the short side and keeping us properly skeptical for the duration of a vicious, two-day short squeeze. The clock ran out on us before the chiseled-in-stone downside target at 4478.75 could be achieved, however. It remains theoretically viable, even if not as enticing for bottom-fishing as it would have been on Friday at mid-session.

Gold has shown no net gain or loss in a year-and-a-half and will likely remain trapped in a nervous range until something very significant changes in the big economic/financial picture.  The pattern shown, with a 1629.00 downside target given here earlier, has provided some excellent entry points for 'mechanical' and 'reverse' trades; but that's all gold is good for at the moment: just a trade. We can reconsider the dour outlook if the futures pop above mid-November's 1882 high or penetrates the downside target at 1629. The latter seems most unlikely, but the Hidden Pivot levels by themselves will remain useful in any event.

The 22.01 downside target I flagged at the beginning of the week worked beautifully, enabling bottom-fishing less than two cents off the intraday (and weeky) low. It occurred on Friday at  22.03 and gave way to a strong bounce that could have produced a quick profit of as much as $10,000 on four contracts. No one reported doing the trade, however, so I provided no further guidance.  The extent of the bounce is unpredictable at this time, but because it has come from a Hidden Pivot target that took more than three months to reach, we might expect it to continue untroubled for at least another 4-7 days if not significantly longer.

I've used a composite chart for the now-defunct December contract to project a rally target at 166^27. Its equivalent, basis the March, would be around 165^10. I've also used a 'reverse ABC' pattern for this projection because it yields a lower target than one where 'A' is lower than 'C'. My reason for being cautious is that the impulse leg of the pattern did not exceed any distinctive prior peaks. It is properly impulsive and therefore bullish, but not impressively powerful.  Although my long-term outlook is bullish, I'll be tempted to try shorting for a scalp near 165^10. Stay tuned to the chat room if you care.

The pattern shown is nutty, but not so nutty that it won't work for getting long 'mechanically' if you choose, or even getting short at D=98.00. I've used it because the more obvious pattern occupying the last four weeks is a little too obvious to be 'our little secret'.  A run-up to 98 is going to create more problems for a bull market that is already years overdue for a devastating correction. It will make overseas profits earned by U.S. multinationals shrink, but it will also tighten the deflationary noose around everyone who owes dollars. This will come as a rude surprise, and ultimately a profound shock, to those who make financial decisions based on what they learn from CNBC, CNN, The Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York POS Times. Rick's Picks readers might not be spared from the ravages of the coming Second Great Depression, but at least they will have seen it coming.