Rick Ackerman

Based on a recommendation I put out in the chat room this morning, subscribers bought expiring 370 calls for as little as 0.60. I'll use 0.80 as the official price for a four-contract tracking position -- the highest price reported. Offer two of them to close for 1.40, day order. The stock performed poorly relative to the broad averages and the FAANGs, mainly because there were too many traders -- including us -- fishing for a bottom. Fortunately, we didn't get sandbagged on the opening like so many others when TSLA gapped up $24 and our calls traded as high as 8.90. Despite Monday's plunge, TSLA looks like it will need to do something nasty to  get bulls off its back. We'll stick with the calls anyway, since this stock is capable of leaping $25 on a good day.______ UPDATE (July 3, 9:23 p.m.): Odds are dim that our calls will revive. Time is the key variable. Unfortunately I neglected to factor in a July 4th holiday that will push the stock's inevitable recovery back by one crucial day. Because 'everyone' was too bullish on the stock yesterday, bottom-fishing it every step of the way down after it had been slammed hard, TSLA still needs a nasty washout before its handlers can drum up a short squeeze. It cannot happen till Thursday at the earliest, and by then no conceivable rally will be able to jump start 370-strike calls. They will trade, probably, for around 0.40 or 0.50 at the opening. You can dump them at will -- or hold onto them and pray for a a miracle. But even if the Dow is up 1000 points today, I doubt TSLA will budge. It looks primed to trade just as it did yesterday. Perversely, if the Dow were to fall

The September futures dove sharply Friday afternoon, leaving no doubt about the bullish intentions of the stock market's institutional masters. DaBoyz evidently decided it would be easier to come out of the gate Sunday night with expectations lowered rather than trying to fool everyone into thinking their horse was chomping on the bit at Friday's faked highs. Even with the goosing the S&Ps received from short-covering when the day began, they were unable to take out Wednesday's not-so-daunting peak at 2748.00. The resulting bull-trap high begged for a sharp correction, but not before the bad guys had fully five hours to distribute their load. Check back Sunday night for updates, since there's always a chance that unsettled markets in Europe or Asia could alter their plans. ______ UPDATE (July 1, 9:28 p.m. EDT): The usual suspects are quite active tonight, levitating the futures following a bombed-out low they'd manufactured at 2712.50 on the opening bar.  This is a textbook distribution scheme, but I won't even try to guess where it might run out of steam. _______ UPDATE (July 2, 7:45 a.m.): It ran out of steam at exactly 2728.00 after recouping just a third of Friday's day-ending selloff. The subsequent 23-point slide has brought the bearish pattern shown in this chart into sharper relief, sufficiently so that we can use it to guide us for the next day or two. Notice that the pattern tripped both a mechanical short on the rally to the green line (x=2726.81) and a subsequent 'counterintuitive' one from Friday's high. Bulls are not surrendering without a fight, but they are losing nonetheless.

The futures have moved very predictably lately, tracing out new lows that have bounced at or very near minor Hidden Pivot supports. I'd projected such a reversal from the 1246.40 target shown, and it came on Friday as expected. The actual low was 1246.90 -- four ticks above the 1246.50 bid, stop 1245.90, that I'd advised in the chat room (see my 13:45 post on 6/28).  Since no one reported using this target to get long, I have not established a tracking position.  My next target lies at 1235.90, a middling 'hidden' support that should generate a bounce as precise as the ones that have preceded it. This is my minimum downside projection for the near term, and your trading bias should therefore remain bearish until such time as it is reached.  It would take an upthrust to 1274.50 this week to suggest buyers might be emerging from their coma. ______ UPDATE (July 2, 5:05 p.m.): Exuberant as an infant's funeral, August Gold is closing on my 1235.90 target more quickly than I might have imagined. We should pay close attention -- and bottom-fish with a very tight stop-loss -- when it gets there, if only because the idea of getting long in gold is enough to induce nausea in some investors. There is not quite blood running in the streets, but there are enough rivulets to suggest it's time to give our contrarian instincts free rein.______UPDATE (July 4, 9:12 a.m.): We'll take Tuesday's impulsive rally seriously, based on the contrarian logic stated above. It is vexatious that the futures missed hitting our bid by just $3, but it is also incipiently bullish that this occurred -- the moreso if the rally continues to exceed prior peaks. It has done so twice on the hourly chart over the last two

In choosing which few stocks to serve up as  'bellwethers', I've elevated Amazon above all because of the company's immense brick-and-mortar presence in the U.S. and abroad. Warehouses, delivery fleets and nearly 600,000 employees add up to a very large global operation, one that mirrors America's economy across the entire spectrum of retail consumption. Facebook, on the other hand, exists almost entirely in the cloud, with just 25,000 employees and revenues derived chiefly from advertising. But what advertising!  Zuckerberg & Co. collect the kind of consumer data on two billion users that Madison Avenue firms could only have dreamt about in their 1980s heyday. Even Google and Amazon are limited to information that is merely 'inferrable', meaning they can roughly guess our likes and dislikes by looking at our history of searches and purchases. But on Facebook, we express those likes and dislikes explicitly, allowing the company to know us very personally, and to be targeted with microprecision by Facebook's advertisers. Unlimited Growth Opportunities The foregoing explains why we should accord the same bellwether status to Facebook's shares as we do to Amazon's. Both are companies with unlimited opportunities for growth and visionary leadership. Investors see this very clearly and have bid up the stocks' respective prices to extremely rich multiples. Looking at FB's chart, it strongly implies an impending, $36 rally to at least 230.79, a major Hidden Pivot resistance. Given the way buyers recently shredded their way past the 189.91 midpoint pivot, I'd rate the stock an odds-on bet to reach the target, implying a move of nearly 20% from these levels.  If so, it should give pause to bears who think the bull market begun in 2009 is about to end. This is most unlikely as long as FB still has a substantial rally ahead of it

The recent high occurred in an interesting place -- i.e., just shy of a clear and compelling Hidden Pivot resistance at 1769.10. On the chart shown, it looks like bulls missed the target by a hair. The actual shortfall was about $5, however, and that was enough to strand our timely bid for puts just before the stock plunged 118 points, or about 6%, in just two days. It took AMZN nearly two months to trace out the bullish ABCD pattern that got it to the target, so we might expect the stock to take at least 2-3 weeks before it could attempt a run-up to new record highs.  This will leave it vulnerable to a second corrective leg that could send the stock down to as low as 1605.77 by week's ends. We'll keep watch for now, but stay tuned to the chat room in case an opportunity develops to buy out-of-the-money put options for a bargain price. _______ UPDATE (July 2, 8:01 a.m.): Overnight weakness has given authority to the pattern shown; it is the one that produced the 1605.77 target noted above. For now we can use its 1664.59 midpoint Hidden Pivot as a minimum downside objective._______ UPDATE (July 2, 5:15 p.m.): Bears never stood a chance after AMZN's world-class handlers gapped the stock down $21 on the opening bar. It was up, up and away thereafter, the fruits of a short-squeeze that should have little trouble achieving the 1737.16 target shown in this chart.  _______ UPDATE (July 4): I may have overestimated the bullish intentions of AMZN's handlers, since they gapped the stock $9 higher on the opening in order to distribute it to the rubes. This is not bullish price action, but I won't even hazard a prediction as to what it implies for trading

With Trump's immigration policies dominating the headlines at the moment, we shouldn't count too heavily on domestic or geopolitical news to pick up the pace of things on Wall Street this week.  Stocks marked time as June came to an end, and even the FAANG stocks, for all their day-to-day histrionics, went nowhere.  It is in the midst of such summer tedium that we sometimes turn to news of the weird to occupy our browsing hours. In that spirit, I offer you the tabloid saga of one Melissa Brunning, who by her own account is 'just a blonde [who did] a stupid thing.'

Stocks will be on their own Friday, since June consumer sentiment numbers due out are unlikely to cause even a ripple on Wall Street. The data represent a survey of 600 households, and the results usually correlate with consumer spending.  Most of us are already feeling the pinch by the time these indicators hint of a downturn, but sometimes they will surprise with a burst of giddiness that seems to have come from out-of-the-blue. Relative to your own life, would you regard a spike in consumer sentiment as bullish, or bearish?

I've cautioned that rallies are starting to feel more distributive, but that's surely not what was going on today.  Rather, sellers spent several fruitless hours pounding away at a 'midpoint support' at 2693.75 that lay eight points beneath the previous day's close; then they gave up.  The result was a moderate short-squeeze that looks likely to test the 2748.00 peak that capped Wednesday's nasty surprise.  From a technical perspective, that would amount to rally to nowhere even if the peak is exceeded. But the longer-term chart featured here today shows what it would take for bulls to have something to feel good about. Specifically, they would need to generate a spike that takes out the two numbered peaks; moreover, once peak #1 has been exceeded, there could be no pause until #2 has been bettered as well. That would put the futures on-course for a run-up as high as 2997.75, a Hidden Pivot target equating to around Dow 27,000. I am skeptical this is about to occur but always willing to keep an open mind.

It was obvious that the FAANGs and the broad averages couldn't continue in opposite directions for much longer. On Wednesday the discrepancy was resolved in exactly the way we might have expected: with Mr. Market ripping traders a new  orifice -- especially those who may have thought they'd figured things out.  The day began with the lunatic stocks, led as usual by AMZN and NFLX, in gap-up openings that reached midway into Monday/Tuesday's steep decline. From there, however, it was down, down, down as the rabid FAANGs turned on those who would have been most encouraged by the spritely opening bar. I'd tell you the stock turned on its handlers, but they were clearly in control, channeling pent-up market orders on the opening to create a fleeting illusion of strength.  So is every rally now a distribution even for the FAANGs?  That's my take, since the broad averages seem too fatigued, perhaps terminally, to support the appearance of buying power. They remained smugly placid on Wednesday as the FAANGs did their crazy war-dance, but by day's end they'd joined in the un-fun, with the Dow slipping 165 points and seemingly wanting more.