Rick Ackerman

AMZN is the only stock to which we need pay attention in order to get the big picture right. The company does nearly everything it does extremely well, and its shares are a must-own for any portfolio manager who wants to keep his or her job. In the tout immediately below, I've explained the importance of today's strong rally in the stock, which topped four cents from a 1699.04 target that I'd drum-rolled here in April with the shares trading $240 lower. As of this moment, it would be speculative to say I expect the stock to do this or that. But it won't be long before we know whether a top, or perhaps THE top, is in.  I've implicitly bet against this outcome by forecasting a 300-point S&P rally here the other day.  This seems a better bet to me than laying even odds that buyers in AMZN are spent.  In any event, we are likely to have our answer soon.

AMZN topped Tuesday four cents from a potentially very important target at 1699.04 that I'd drum-rolled back in April. The stock was trading $240 lower at the time, but this technically derived 'Hidden Pivot' was so clear and compelling that it seemed almost certain to be achieved. Why the emphasis?  AMZN had long since become a mantra for me -- the General Motors of this era, but with far more importance to the U.S. economy. The firm operates on a vast scale globally and has demonstrated convincingly that it can dominate any market in which it chooses to compete. Web services, for one. Were you aware that this is a multi-trillion dollar 'niche,' and that Amazon has been crushing the second biggest player, Microsoft?  Well, it's a fact. The company is so good at what it does that it may even figure out how to make money selling groceries. In the meantime, it can continue to generate epic cash flow by remaining the dominant seller of all things online.  Amazon currently accounts for 45% of e-commerce sales and its share of U.S. retail sales is around four percent.  You can bet that CEO Bezos is hard at work figuring out how to double that number. One Thing Is Perfectly Predictable... All of which should tell you why I monitor AMZN's charts so closely, and why I am spotlighting the 1699.04 target now that it has been achieved.  It could be straight down from here. My initial outlook had noted that the 1699.04 Hidden Pivot resistance would seem impenetrable, at least on the first try. We should know by the end of the week, if not sooner. But if the stock should drop $100 or more over the next day or two, we should take this very seriously, since it may

How will the U.S. economy, particularly exports, cope with a rising dollar? Pretty well, we should expect. Even though a strong dollar will create drag for U.S. companies geared to selling abroad, there are reasons to doubt that it will slow the steady trek higher this summer that I've projected for U.S. stocks.  For one, investors have been discounting a strengthening dollar all along, and it is already baked in the cake. And for two, it will rev up domestic consumption of imports.  Granted, the lion's share of the proceeds will go back to Canada, Europe and Asia. But U.S. vendors -- of everything from cars to anchovies -- will take their cut, and that should be sufficient to provide a net boost to an economy that has continued to chug along. Incidentally, my target projection for the Dollar Index, currently trading for around 94.04, is 96.43 -- a pretty big move percentage-wise.  This is corroborated by a technical pattern I've flagged to subscribers on the Rick's Picks home page tonight. There is an unusually good trading opportunity in the offing, but without going into the details, it makes me even more confident about the dollar's continued rise.

The precise stall at p=2750.25 will make this an easy call:  If the 'hidden' resistance is breached, you can bank on a further rally of at least 75 points to D=2825.50. It's always possible, of course, that buyers will chicken out on the first attempt. But if they push past our benchmark by 15-20 points and then pull back to the green line, that would set up a very appealing 'mechanical' buy, stop 2674.75. Notice as well that this latest rally surpassed a key external peak at 2744.00 recorded back in March. That makes the rally very bullishly impulsive -- yet another reason for a strong bullish bias here, even if a correction intercedes for a few days this week. _______ UPDATE (June 6, 10:33 p.m. EDT):  The trade mentioned above could come into play, since today's upthrust exceeded the midpoint pivot by 25 points.  If you trade the E-Mini S&Ps and you're keen on leveraging this set-up, please let me know in the chat room, where real-time guidance is possible. ________ UPDATE (June 7, 11:00 p.m.): The 2825.50 target remains valid, but if the futures go any higher than today's 2779.75 peak, I will cancel the mechanical bid at 2712.50. _______ UPDATE (June 10, 11:10 p.m.): I've raised the possibility in today's commentary that bad news emanating from G7 could cause stocks to reverse the rally of the last two  weeks. If so, here's a chart that shows how far the futures could fall. A decline to the green line (2715.94) would trip a theoretical short to p=2652.13.

Last week Rick's Picks projected a nearly 300-point rally in the S&P 500, although we couldn't say why. Now we know the answer:  Trump.  Even if the half of America afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) can't see it, much less applaud it, just about everything the President's done lately has come up a winner.  First, he thumbed his nose at the geopolitical world, especially Europe, when he called off the nuclear deal with Iran. Merkel, Macron et al. acted angry and shocked.  After all, when was the last time the leader of a country threatened to do something and then actually did it?  In retrospect, what followed should have surprised no one:  Hundreds of German companies decided they would rather do business with the U.S. than Iran, boosting the power of Trump's vow to tighten the noose on Iran's economy. Next was the diplomatically unusual way the President called off the summit meeting, telling North Korea's lunatic dictator to take it and shove it. Summit revived!  Then Trump followed through on a threat to reinstate heavy tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Yes, it's true that there are no economic winners in a trade war.  But are we actually in one?  Judging from the headlines, the news media is certain we are. But I'm more inclined to think it's just a negotiating ploy -- i.e., The Art of the Deal put into practice on a global scale. My prediction is that Europe, Mexico and Canada, which have threatened countermeasures, will come around before any serious damage is done. Moreover, whatever deal ensues, it will be perceived by everyone not afflicted with TDS as a winner for all parties concerned.  It already is for Argentina, Australia and South Korea, which have gotten deals from Trump that preserved their exemptions. Black

The Dow Industrials held up surprisingly well on Thursday, considering the scary news about tariffs. Two months ago, talk of a global trade war sounded like just another ginned-up story from a news media desperate for headlines. In fact, however, Trump's latest levies, which effectively cancel existing exemptions for steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and Europe, are sufficiently punitive to have provoked an instant, $12.8B retaliation by Canada. It was characterized as "the strongest trade action Canada has taken in the post-war era" and will take effect on July 1, matching the U.S. levy dollar-for-dollar.  The tariff will add 25 percent to the cost of steel and 10 percent to aluminum, meaning consumers will feel it down to the level of canned soups and key rings. The fact that the Dow Average managed to close down a mere 250 points suggests that the money-managing chimpanzees who are paid princely sums to throw good money at a relative handful of U.S. stocks are as oblivious to events in the real world as their simian progenitors. My hunch is that they will catch up with the bad news in the days and weeks ahead with a string of days like today, punctuated by an occasional really bad day. Even so, from a technical standpoint the worst I could see would be a nearly 2000-point drop to 22544. I'd suggest jotting that number down if you want to get ahead of it.

Elsewhere on the page, I've detailed the case for a nearly 300-point rally in the S&P 500.  This goes squarely against my gut feeling that the U.S. economy will be in recession before the year ends.  The chart I've presented starkly refutes this. It says the economy is more likely to stumble along, producing stock-market rallies that will seem illogical at best, reckless at worst. However, given the inexorable flow of money into U.S. stocks, especially from places where economic prospects seem even dimmer, it is hardly farfetched to predict that rallies that shouldn't happen...will happen.  They will continue to plague 'logical' folk as long as a fund manager still breathes. Along the way, said money manager will have staunch help from short-covering bears, few of whom will ever understand their key role in misinterpreting the psychology of markets.

It can be hard work to calculate an option's fair value for purposes of determining how much we should pay for it with the underlying stock trading at a particular price. During this session Rick cuts to the chase, demonstrating a quick and easy method that requires no calculations, only an ABCD price pattern derived from the chart of the option itself

There should little that is unfamiliar in today's chart, which we've considered dozens of times since stocks broke sharply lower in February.  Punctuated by occasional, wild price swings, stocks have been grinding along ever since, meting out growing dollops of frustration to any trader, investor or forecaster who would seek to benefit from the ongoing drama (or, mostly, lack thereof).  Today, however, I want to share one simple observation that is as straightforward and free from emotional bias as I can make it. To wit, the S&P 500 (using the E-Mini S&Ps as a vehicle) became a 'mechanical' buy when it fell to the green line on March 22. That is bullish, plain and simple. The 'mechanical' trade implied is a specialty of Rick's Picks because it has worked so consistently for subscribers. Without going into the proprietary details of why the 'mechanical' buy shown is such a beautiful specimen, I'll say only that it leaves little room for doubting bulls, let alone for permabearish skeptics like myself. A key feature of such set-ups is that they excel at handling the scary, second-wave dive that so frequently interrupts otherwise very-bullish-looking charts. In this case, the all-but-obligatory dive took the E-Minis down by nearly 10% in March, narrowly missing a theoretical stop-loss that would have triggered just beneath 2532.50, the pattern's point 'C' low. 'Mechanical' Indicator Unintimidated A very similar pattern has replicated itself many times in other stocks -- all instances where presumably even the most steadfast bulls would have thought twice about sticking around. The most persuasive instances of recent note came in CRISPR Therapeutics, as well as in some of the more popular bitcoin trading vehicles before they went brain-dead. Bottom line: The E-mini S&Ps are not only on a long-term buy signal, they look likely to achieve