Rick Ackerman

Although this latest buying binge is unwarranted, ill-considered and reckless, it's hard for me to imagine AAPL not reaching the 214.30 target shown. That's slightly lower than the one at 214.58 given here earlier, and it can serve as a minimum upside objective for the very near-term.  However, we should be prepared to get short via put options if and when the stock gets there, since the Hidden Pivot looks sufficiently clear to repel a charge. ______ UPDATE (August 13, 7:14 p.m.): The engineered short-squeeze on the opening bar died a hair short of 211.00, a new all-time high. Subscribers who have ridden this rally with my 214.30 target in mind should be using a 'dynamic' trailing stop to keep risk/reward in a 1:3 relationship. That means with AAPL peaking today at 210.95, a 209.83 trailing stop would have been in effect. The target remains valid nonetheless, although we'll put it out of mind if the stock drops to 204.51. ______ UPDATE (August 16, 5:58 p.m.): Today's short-squeeze pushed the stock to within 49 cents of the rally target we've been using for the last couple of weeks. (With the stock trading $15 lower, I wrote as follows: 'It’s hard for me to imagine AAPL not reaching [this] target'.)  I hope subscribers made hay on the way there. And now, here's a chart that shows why I'm not very eager to short AAPL at these levels. The 226.26 target looks like an easy winner to me.

We are going to find out soon whether Mr. Art of the Deal can bring China around on trade issues. It's encouraging that Trump has already turned what had begun to look like a full-blown trade war with Europe into a success story for global business. However, it remains to be seen whether he can extract concessions from the hardball players in Beijing.  For the time being, the news media have ratcheted down their Trump Derangement Syndrome sufficiently to  report more honestly on what incorrigible scumbags the Chinese are in all things having to do with trade. We are dealing with one of the most corrupt governments on Earth, after all, and it is hardly unreasonable for Trump to demand that they show some respect for, at the very least, intellectual property. The Next Big Rally His odds of success have taken a favorable turn recently with the run on China's currency and stock market.  Bears have been piling up bets against both, and it's only a matter of time before the government is forced to do something about it. Up until now, official policy has been to allow the currency to drift lower in order to compensate for the effects of higher tariffs on Chinese goods. This strategy cannot work for long if at all, however, since Trump can raise tariffs quicker than China can devalue its currency.  Bottom line: Look for China to blink first.  If and when this happens, it's going to kick the U.S. bull market into high gear.

TSLA took a robust leap after the close on word that the company was not burning cash quite as quickly as had been assumed by razor-sharp analysts just minutes before the announcement. The stock's handlers can claim the distinction of being the sleaziest in the game, so adept are they at leveraging news stories planted and timed for maximum effect. In this respect, Tesla shares trade like those of a small pharmaceutical company that has everything riding on trials. Remember when we'd see news photos of Tesla sports coupes in flames by the side of the road?  The stock would dive, and the sleazeballs would scoop up shares at an instant 20% discount. Yesterday, in releasing earnings data, Musk apologized for dissing some analysts, all was forgiven, and the stock rocketed 12% in the blink of an eye. From a technical standpoint it looks bound for the 347.00 target shown, a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance. We'll want to short it when it gets there, since a precise stall seems likely. Stay tuned to the chat room for further guidance in real time. ________ UPDATE (August 2, 11:32 p.m.): Tesla's fitful rally, characterized by a series of ratcheting, marginally higher highs into day's end, tells us that shorts are caught in the ringer. Only one subscriber reported trying to short the stock, so I haven't established a tracking position. It will take more than the so-far $3 overshoot of the 347.00 pivot to put D=407.86 (see inset) in play. _______ UPDATE (August 5, 5:10 p.m.): Tesla Derangement Syndrome persisted until the final bell, costing shorts a reported $1.7 billion.  The Wall Street Journal reported they were still standing their ground -- as well they might, considering the brazenness of the PR scam that has squeeze the stock higher.  The Journal was

Bulls forged effortlessly higher on Friday, suggesting they'll have little difficulty achieving the 2874.75 target shown in the next day or two. Actually, at the rate Wall Street's favorite hot-air balloon has been ascending, it could be halfway there by Sunday night.  Assuming the futures go no higher than around 2844.00 first, they'd become a mechanical buy on a pullback to 2811.75, stop 2790.75. A move to the target would equate to about 300 Dow points, which presumably would leave the Indoos just shy of the key peak at 28,800 recorded before they took a second leg down in late February. It would be a logical place for the broad averages to die rather than continue to new record highs, so caution is the watchword. _______ UPDATE (August 8, 9:51 p.m.): Bulls and bears were locked in a vicious pillow fight Wednesday, pushing the futures whither and thither but ultimately nowhere. I will hazard no predictions for Thursday._______ UPDATE (August 9, 3:22 p.m.): Zzzzzzzzz.

The sleazeballs who manipulate Facebook shares for a living were hard at work Wednesday night, lopping more than $50 off the share price in thin, after-hours trading. Say one thing for these guys, they certainly have a knack for turning bad news into opportunity. Instead of paying as much as $218 per share toward the end of Wednesday's session, they hyper-leveraged a punk earnings report after the close to orchestrate a plunge to as low as $164. That amounts to a 25% haircut in the blink of an eye for a minuscule earnings miss, a mildly downbeat forecast for the next two quarters and subpar user growth in Q2. Ordinarily we could count on the trade-desk Svengalis to run the stock back up sellers' wazoo as soon as the latter are devastated and spent. In this case, however, the shares may need to adjust more or less permanently to certain new realities concerning the way Facebook gathers and uses information about its billion-and-a-half subscribers. Each and every one of them has the potential to be 'monetized', as we well know, but perhaps less aggressively now that Zuckerberg & Co. have come under close scrutiny by Congress and EU mandarins. Facebook is certain to face more stringent privacy rules, and so the stock is not entirely likely to recoup tonight's losses with the usual, unseemly quickness. In any case, FB will be largely untradable, other than by machines, in the days and weeks ahead as bulls and bears move back toward equilibrium._______ UPDATE (August 5, 5:08 p.m. EDT): It has taken the aforementioned sleazeballs more than a week to engineer a bottom, but by Friday it looked as though they'd finally succeeded, provoking some short-covering that has put the sold-out lows behind.  I don't have any compelling rally targets to offer

A midpoint resistance at 1837.77 neatly contained the latest buying spree, although there's no reason to think bulls (and short-covering bears) won't obliterate it the next time they get a  chance.  That would put the 1936.21 target shown in play.  This number differs slightly from the target given here earlier, which used night bars.  With a potential $114 rally in the offing, we'll look to get aboard any way we can, presumably via camouflage if there's no 'mechanical' pullback to the green line._______ UPDATE (August 9, 4:18 p.m.): The target is still valid, but a buy-and-hold position held to a 1:3 risk/reward would have been stopped out (very profitably) near 1914.00. _______ UPDATE (August 13, 7:25 p.m.): Buying Amazon shares is about the only trick Wall Street's portfolio-managing chimpanzees seem to know -- no matter what the stock market is doing. They bought stock as high as 1925 today -- $11 shy of my target -- before retreating below 1900. As a practical matter, using the 'dynamic' trailing stop I always advise, any long positions predicated on the 1936 price objective would have exited on a 1921.26 'dynamic' trailing stop. The target remains valid nonetheless.

TSLA's rally is so frothing-at-the-mouth stupid-scary that it's tempting to think the stock is about to lead the high-fliers over a cliff. The automaker's shares took a rabid leap Thursday, driven by the epiphany that the company isn't burning cash quite as quickly as Wall Street's best and brightest had estimated.  What really juiced the stock was a solemn promise from founder Elon Musk that, from this point forward, Tesla is going to be profitable. Moreover, he promised he wouldn't go any deeper into hock to keep production lines running at full tilt. Say one thing for the guy, he's got brass balls, considering that even a selloff in the stock market in he months ahead could turn his rosy forecast to suet. Regardless, traders bought the 'new' Tesla with reckless abandon Thursday, particularly bears who had bet the 'Don't Pass' line aggressively.  Turns out there are no more shares for shorts to borrow, a situation that could propel TSLA even high as the week ends. We shouldn't be too eager to get in its way, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the show.

Once again, we scoured the charts looking for opportunities to force trades on a day when the markets were brain-dead. A ‘momentous’ Fed announcement was due out, and stocks were even more turgid than usual. Even so, we were able to position ourselves to get short in VXX using put options. The trade did not trigger, but the set-up we used is repeatable and explicitly detailed. It required only a smattering of options know-how, and no knowledge whatsoever about the concept of “fair value.” (Please note: Due to a technical glitch, the video portion of this recording was lost for about the first ten minutes.)

The stock market feels like its being propped up for distribution -- heavy as lead, but suspiciously unable to sell off for more than an hour or two. Shares have gotten little net boost from FAANG earnings, although it was impressive to see the broad averages shrug off the carnage in NFLX and FB shares. This was perhaps a little more shrugging than makes good sense, but DaBoyz had plenty og help from corporate buybacks and a growing influx of foreign money that evidently sees U.S. stocks as a better value than European or Asian shares. It'll be tempting to take a few put options home over the weekend, since it looks like the party's already over for Q2 earnings season.