Rick Ackerman

The Dow Industrials recouped about a third of their rather significant losses before the bell -- all within what we must acknowledge as a 2000-point 'comfort zone' ranging from around 23,000 to 25,000. The swings could become mind-numbing even if gurus continue to predict, as is their wont, that 'something' is about to happen. But if you follow the seasonal adage -- i.e., investors should sell and go away in May -- it may be time to prepare for one of the dullest off-season performances ever.  In his latest edition of Crosscurrents, my friend and colleague Alan M. Newman notes the following: "We coined the term 'Dead Zone' probably 25 years ago, to describe the stock market’s obvious seasonal patterns. The ideas first offered up by Yale Hirsch and Norman Fosbach were too interesting to ignore. Simply put, for almost seven decades, there have been two very distinct seasonal periods – one good and one awful. Going back to 1950, $10,000 invested in the Dow Industrials for only the periods from the end of October through the end of April would now be worth $985,511.77. On the other hand, $10,000 invested for only the period from the end of April through the end of October would now be worth only $11,092.68. "In other words, 98.9% of a passive investor’s portfolio would stem from the favorable seasonality. This stark comparison led to the old adage, 'sell in May and go away,' and for the most part, this has functioned as sage advice." A final, sobering note from Alan:  The Dead Zone's grip appears to have widened since it was first described, extending beyond October into.... December. If so, the patience of investors is about to be tested to the utmost.

This has been a very significant correction so far, for sure, but it looks like it has farther to go -- presumably into the high $50s or low $60s. The news cycle regarding crude prices has become more expansive, suggesting that although the Saudis still control supply at the margin, they are in no rush to run up prices and tax the world anew. I still foresee another major upthrust, but we shouldn't be surprised if, absent an exogenous geopolitical shock, it takes at least several months for bulls to build a base. The threat of war between Iran and Israel has somewhat receded because Syria seems ready to kick Iran out of the region, having wearied of Israeli strikes against bases on which Iran has stored weaponry and military gear. _______ UPDATE (June 4, 6:42 p.m. EDT): Bulls staged a feeble last hurrah before dropping beneath the 65.12 midpoint support shown.  My forecast has called for a decline into the low $60s or even high $50s, but this latest price action gives us a specific target at D=61.57 to shoot at. A rally to the green line in the meantime could be shorted 'mechanically', stop 68.68._______ UPDATE (June 12, 6:21 p.m.): Buyers have been hanging tough -- tougher than I'd expected,  for sure. For now, use a 66.82 target (30-minute chart, A= 64.27 on 6/6; B=66.24). I will put out a fresh and presumably bullish guidance if the July contract simply blows through that Hidden Pivot._______ UPDATE (June 14, 11;14 p.m.): The futures bettered the 66.82 target, but not by much. However, the v-shaped correction suggests buyers have plenty of energy left. If they pulverize the 67.26 pivot shown, look for more upside on Friday to at least 67.63 (30-minute, A=65.89 on 6/13 at 10:00 a.m.) _______ UPDATE (June

Without going too deeply into the technical details, I'll mention that the Dow Industrials look primed to lay an egg in the days ahead, if not for significantly longer. The ABC-type trade set-up shown in the chart usually works as a kind of bullish springboard, but the fact that buyers couldn't make hay with it last week is a sign that they are likely to show fatigue when stocks begin to trade anew Sunday night. 'Counterintuitive' trades are usually among the most reliable and profitable in the Hidden Pivot arsenal, but this time we may be doing well just to extract a few crumbs from a weak countertrend. If the picture should change, I will try to provide timely guidance in the chat room, so stay tuned if you care. ________ UPDATE (May 29, 12:23 p.m. EDT):  With the Dow down nearly 500 points at the moment, it would seem that the headline and forecast sent out last night nicely anticipated the stock market's behavior.  But remember: No matter how placid things may seem on the surface, the stock market is a psychotic beast, no more predictable at times than a rabid mongoose.

Rick discussed CRSP, CL, TNX, GC, SMG, VXX, DIA, ES, EDIT, and the gene editing stocks in general.

Have anything beautiful you would like to share with Rick's Picks readers?  Send me a link that I use and you could win a free month's subscription to the newsletter, including 24/7 access to one of the trading world's friendliest chat rooms.  Meanwhile, in the complete absence of any market activity worthy of note, here's something I would like to share with you today.  It is an excerpt from The Crock of Gold, a wondrous work of Irish wit and transcendent poetry from James Stephens.  There is no other book remotely like it in the English language. As described by a reviewer at Amazon, "the story begins with two philosophers who are married to two women (spitefully). The wise advice of the philosopher earns him the enmity of Leprechauns, when the crock of gold is stolen. Satiric and yet generally light you will love this inventive book. "Many very modern challenges to the human spirit are presented extremely well, The old thief's tale is poignant and sad. "Some analysis of the deeper meanings in this book are in short, a distaste for the modern era; modern ennui and angst; the limits of philosophy; an indictment of justice systems; and attacks on the loss of the Irish heritage to western fables; the value of beauty and art; the meaning of wisdom; the nature of man and woman; and the meaning of love. The story begins... "In due process of time two children were born of these marriages. They were born on the same day and in the same hour, and they were only different in this, that one of them was a boy and the other one was a girl. Nobody was able to tell how this had happened, and, for the first time in their lives, the Philosophers were forced

I've been trying to wean myself off a news-junkie habit, but it hasn't been easy.  You know how it goes: a headline in your browser catches your attention, and you follow it to a thread that gives ten great reasons why Catherine Zeta-Jones can't get work in Hollywood.  Fascinating stuff, but where does the trail end?  Online, it never does. You follow the Zeta-Jones article till it ends, and then your browser mysteriously knows that you might be in the mood for similar revelations concerning the former careers of Drew Barrymore, Brendan Fraser and Kevin Costner.  Costner has never made a bad sports movie, and so you finish off the evening -- or rather, it finishes you off -- with For the Love of the Game, or maybe your umpteenth screening of Bull Durham, which never gets stale. If you've read this far, I hope you can appreciate my having spared you commentary on a stock market that has become so abjectly tedious and uninteresting as to have become almost unwatchable.  Rick's Picks offers a smattering of scandal-mongering in the chat room, but even there I cannot promise that the side-show will make market-watching any more interesting than it has been. The best I can offer in today's The Morning Line is a snapshot of Zeta-Jones, surely one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the big screen.  If you hanker for something new and fabulous in jazz, try Joanne Brackeen's album, Breath of Brazil, which I've mentioned here before.  I've listened to it 500 times in my car without tiring of it. It is currently unavailable, even on Amazon, but you can sample her amazing talents on YouTube. And if you like tango music, here's Aydar Gaynullin with something that will blow your socks off.

It is on quiet days like Tuesday that we need to remind ourselves that the stock market's true personality more closely resembles that of Jack Nicholson, famously pictured here from The Shining, than the sleep-inducing dirge we endured today for six interminable hours. In any event, I continue to resist the idea that DaBoyz will somehow hoist this leaden bull much higher with interest rates, energy prices and the dollar strongly on the rise, the housing boom over and earnings at a probably unbeatable, years-long peak.  That doesn't mean that, on any given day, they are incapable of conning us into believing otherwise.

My gut feeling is that the price of a barrel of crude will reach the low $80s and that this will occur for reasons that no one can confidently predict at the moment.  For now, though, because the futures have topped within pennies of a 72.88 target I'd disseminated here earlier, we should be alert to the possibility of a correction, perhaps a significant one. Even so, if and when the June contract pushes decisively above the 72.88 target just achieved, the next presumptive pop would be to 73.88, a rally target given in the initial sequence of Hidden Pivot resistances originally provided to subscribers.

I've become more bluntly opinionated in these pages lately because following the markets from a purely technical perspective has become almost too boring to care about. Gurus by nature are wont to predict that 'something' is about to happen. However, long stretches of tedium, including such innumerable, senseless rallies to nowhere as we've seen in recent weeks, mock my efforts. But I cannot tell you to expect anything like a collapse, if for no other reason than that it is simply not in Amazon's chart.  The stock is the best proxy we have for the FAANG-obsessed mindset of portfolio-managing chimpanzees who show no sign whatsoever of being ready to pull the plug. For more-entertaining insights, consider a free trial subscription that will allow you to access the Rick's Picks chat room.  Today, for instance, you would read about Ben Rosovsky, a PSE market maker from the good old days who failed so badly at trading that he tried to rob a bank on Alameda Island.  What Ben failed to consider, and what got him a stretch in a federal prison, was that there were only four bridges available for escape. Another depressed market maker took a very different escape route: suicide with a .44-magnum handgun. And a third, enjoying rare success, disintegrated in his aerobatic jet when it dove at subsonic speed into Richardson Bay near Sausalito.  Read all about it -- and more! -- in the chat room.