Rick Ackerman

Gold exploded last week after spending three weeks in a tedious consolidation. The April contract is bound most immediately for the 1336.00 target shown, but if it gives way easily expect the rally to continue to the next, 1345.50. It has required great patience to stay with the trend, but don't be surprised if it fools the herd by accelerating, since that is what few expect. I don't ordinarily recommend placing 'mechanical' bids at the red line (p=1313.50), but if it's touched on a pullback, we can use the signal to set-up a camouflage trade with risk tightly managed. Playing it by-the-book, a mechanical entry at 1313.50 would require a stop-loss at 1302.80. Alternatively, if the futures were to swoon violently down to the green line (1297.50), that would generate an even more attractive mechanical buying opportunity. _______ UPDATE (Feb 6, 5:17 p.m.): Gold has an annoying habit of testing two key Hidden Pivot assumptions: 1) that good trades seldom originate in one's psychological comfort zone; and that 2) the more vicious the price swings, the better mechanical set-ups work. And so it goes with the April futures at the moment, as they plummet toward the 1297.50 'x' level where an ostensibly appealing 'mechanical buy' would be signaled, stop 1281.40. Here's the chart. Let's see how it goes._______ UPDATE (Feb 10): The 1345.50 target remains viable, but I am no longer recommending entry via a mechanical bid because the pattern has strayed too far from 'textbook'.

The rally has been too steep for mechanical entries, with opening bar gaps that make it difficult to get aboard even using alternative strategies. There should be little doubt that HUI will achieve the 176.65 target (see inset) by week's end if not sooner. It would take a bit more than that, however -- specifically, a thrust touching 177.73 -- to put a 317.56 target on the weekly chart in play. At that point, p=224.34 would become our minimum upside objective. This suggests we'll be able to calendar-spread distant strikes profitably, so stay tuned for guidance as things develop.

The stock market’s masters have been working AMZN and AAPL like a tag team, pressing one into service when the other lacks the energy to goad stocks higher. That surely describes the current dynamic. DaBoyz short-squeezed AAPL for a third straight day, more than offsetting the drubbing AMZN is getting tonight on a downbeat earnings report that has sent the stock plummeting $100 after-hours. The selloff is a brazen shakedown, to judge from the news that caused it. Here, supposedly, is what is ailing Amazon: “Concerns include slowing unit and NA Online growth, slowing subscription/advertising segment growth, gross margin miss, and guidance (likely reflects India issues, lower 3P fees).” What a load of crap! As bearish as my outlook for the stock market is, and has been, this is the kind of ginned-up news that would make me want to buy the stock, not dump it. (In fact, and for your information, AMZN became a “mechanical” buy, in Hidden Pivot parlance, this evening at 1646.15, stop 1591.37.) When Bears Throw in the Towel The way DaBoyz are able to work the two stocks reminds me of how slot-machine “mechanics” in the old days used to “rhythm” two machines simultaneously to extract the maximum payoff from the house. That’s what’s going on with this bear rally, as leadership passes constantly between AMZN, AAPL and a few other institutional workhorses. No one can predict exactly how high the rally will go, but we already know its purpose: to fool the riff-raff into thinking it’s capable of achieving new all-time highs. The Dow and S&Ps aren’t quite there yet, but they will be soon if the wiseguys can get AMZN and AAPL to rise simultaneously. Bulls aren’t the only ones Mr. Market is intent on fooling: Inveterate skeptics like your editor fall in

This tracking vehicle for junior gold miners handled a clear Hidden Pivot resistance with such easy aplomb today that I've hauled out a long-term chart for the first time in a long while. GDXJ has yet to hit the green line at 34.82 that would put the 61.54 target in play theoretically, but perhaps it's time to go out on a limb and assume that this will soon occur. That would make the 43.73 'midpoint pivot' our minimum objective while bolstering the case that gold stocks are finally getting off the launching pad after languishing for most of the last eight years . Actually, they did so in 2016 with an impulsive rally that while strong, left something to be desired. Specifically, the thrust failed to surpass a key 'external' peak at 54.56 recorded on the way down in 2013. No matter. We'll give the good guys and the very patient the benefit of the doubt here, especially since stocks may have entered a bear market, signaling a major tone change in the realm of investable assets. _______ UPDATE (Feb 21, 1:31 p.m.): A thrust to 35.04 has tripped the theoretical 'buy' signal noted above, warranting a moderate increase in our already-bullish trading bias.

DaBoyz have harnessed panic-stricken bears to do in minutes what bulls might not have accomplished in a month -- i.e., push a beleaguered Facebook $25 higher without wasting a dime of their own money. I doubt whether even urgent short-covering can spike the stock past the 171.25 target, but we can use it as a minimum upside target for the very near-term nonetheless. Depending on how things open, we might look at expiring puts, tightly stopped, to leverage the target.______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 11:45 a.m.): I bought expiring 165 puts for 0.35, a nickel off their low, when FB topped this morning at 171.68. Several subscribers did likewise when I flagged the opportunity in the chat room. At least one subscriber has already cashed out for a 50% gain on FB's drop to 168.56. I'm holding onto the puts myself for a swing at the fences. _______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 4:41 p.m.): As posted in the chat room at the time, I doubled out on half of the puts when FB sank minutes before the closing bell. The 0.70 I received for the puts will effectively give me a free short position when trading commences Friday morning.  In the meantime, just in case the stock unexpectedly swoons overnight, I've entered a distress bid for stock at 163.70 to lock in a profit on my options. If the order fills I'll be able to short 165 calls risklessly for good measure on the opening, leaving me with a three-sided "conversion."  Every subscriber who bought the puts reported making money on them, although it was not possible to tell how many were still holding a position overnight. If you remained short, consider the stock gambit detailed above.

Today's downdraft breached a 95.68 support that I'd said in December was crucial to the bullish look of the dollar's lesser charts.  This warrants caution even though the longer-term charts remain bullish, albeit no longer unambiguously so. Assuming the current wave of selling takes out p2 support at 95.23, look for more slippage to at least 94.75, the pattern's D target.  We'll reevaluate the trend if D gives way easily as well, but it looks likely to produce a tradeable bounce in any event. _______ UPDATE (Feb 7, 10:52 p.m. ET): Buyers recouped their mojo, pushing DXY to within a penny of Jan 24's peak at 96.68. A move above it would generate a robust impulse leg on the hourly chart. _______ UPDATE (Feb 12, 7:53 p.m.): The dollar sold off hard after topping in the middle of the night. However, it did so after generating a very robust impulse leg on the hourly chart, implying the current weakness is merely corrective.

We've been using a 1775 rally target, but I've raised it to 1810.47 because of the gnarly beauty of the pattern shown. The stock looks like a good bet to reach p=1700.93 at a minimum, but if buyers can push easily past this "hidden" resistance, it would put the target itself in play. If it's achieved -- by no means a certain bet -- the rally would surpass no fewer than three major 'external' peaks on the daily chart, seriously damaging the case for a bear market. This is certainly not what I expect, but we'll keep an open mind and let the charts do the talking.

Well, there you have it: the most brazenly bogus rally in the history of the world. Are these guys good, or what? The fix was in even before Powell declared Wednesday afternoon that the Fed would be "patient." (Now there's a word that is history in the making!) AAPL's and Boeing's handlers had already gotten the jump on the Fed chairman's latest PR mutterance, deftly engineering respective short-covering panics half a day ahead of him. It took patience, skill and perfect timing to push Apple shares into their steepest rally in recent memory, considering this grim backdrop atop the front page of The Wall Street Journal: "Apple's iPhone Troubles Persist". That would be putting it mildly.  Apple helped hook bears by announcing a day earlier that the company's business had "stabilized" and that management believes things are bound to improve. (Cue up a global sigh of relief!) Although the Fed's momentous shift toward "patience" had been baked in the cake for at least a month, that didn't stop the usual bandits and lunatics on Wall Street from acting as though this non-news were a revelation. But repeating it publicly for perhaps the fourth or fifth time still had the desired effect: Stocks went ballistic, the dollar got cheaper and everything seemed right in the investment world. Trump himself would not have changed a word of Powell's speech. Recall that the news media had us believing for a while that the two were philosophical enemies. In fact, they are of a like mind when it comes to providing free money to any prospective inflator of assets who is not in prison. Their only difference is that while Trump lets the behavior of the stock market guide his monetary thinking, Powell pretends it is everything but the stock market's health that he

We extended our winning streak with a very modest trade in GDXJ. The goal has been to force a trade each week no matter what, using the lowest-cost vehicle we can find. GDXJ, a $30 number that tracks junior mining companies, fit our needs perfectly, and so we jumped on it, initiating a ‘counterintuitive’ (CI) position in real time that quickly produced a partial profit. An unexpected bonus came when a Fed announcement sent GDXJ soaring after class ended. However, even without the Fed kicker, you or your Aunt Tilly could have made an easy $80 bucks on this one, risking only $28 initially. Put on just one of these cheap, easy trades each day and you’ll have an extra $20,000 at the end of the year. Of courses, the same tactic will work just as well if you use a $300 stock for much bigger returns