Rick Ackerman

AMZN heads the list of 'lunatic stocks' to which I alluded in the latest The Morning Line, and wherever it goes, the broad averages are certain to follow. That's why I've emphasized the bullish point of view in today's tout despite Friday's selloff. It was technically corrective, since the slide was preceded by a thrust that had exceeded two prior peaks on the hourly chart, both of them external. I cannot predict with great confidence whether the point 'C' low at 1400.26 will hold, but even if the stock feints lower Sunday night or Monday morning to create a new low, a semblance of the pattern shown will still rule price movement over the next couple of days.  Alternatively, if AMZN surprises and heads lower, a fall to 1348.02, or very near this number, could set up a very appealing 'counterintuitive' buying opportunity (A=1575.97 on the hourly chart, March 27). _______ UPDATE (April 9, 5:52 p.m.): The stock looked like hell today, but it could fall all the way to 1352.88 without altering the bullish look of the hourly chart. We'll wait and see. _______ UPDATE (April 10, 8:50 p.m.): Use p=1443.48 as a minimum upside target. As always, an easy move past the midpoint pivot would make a further run-up to the D target an odds-on bet.________ UPDATE (April 11, 5:21 p.m.):  A pullback to x=1421.87 would trip a 'mechanical' buy signal, stop 1400.25.  If you are not doing these trades but merely curious to see how well they work, this is a good one to track, since, with respect to desirability, it rates about 7.3 on a 1-10 scale. ______ UPDATE (April 12, 1:44 p.m.): The stock took off in the first  hour after going no lower than 1425.00 overnight, so our order went unfulfilled. The so far

Gold has been testing our patience for more than two months, consolidating a bullish pattern with the potential to reach 1437.60.  Anything above that Hidden Pivot resistance would be hinting of more upside to as high to 1465.85.  Both numbers are clear and compelling, so an easy move through either would be quite bullish. The lower of the two targets will remain viable as long as the futures don't fall beneath the 1309.30 point 'C' low of the pattern shown.  I can offer no guarantees, but this wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world; it might be just Mr. Market's way of pushing bulls a few steps beyond disappointment and toward despair. In any event, we'll wait for it to happen before we reassess the longer-term picture, which remains bullish. _______ UPDATE (April 2, 7:41 p.m. EDT): Today's rally was robust, so the 1373.50 midpoint resistance shown in the original chart (click on inset) can serve as a minimum upside projection for now.  This is gold, remember, and we've grown used to disappointment, so don't regard the 1373.50 target a lock-up, at least not yet. ______ UPDATE (April 8, 5:30 p.m.)  While we wait for something...anything to happen, let me put things in perspective: For every day of pleasure we get from this vehicle, we've learned that there will likely be a least ten days of boredom and/or pain. It is manifestly NOT in a bull market. Understood? ________ APRIL (11, 1:03 a.m.): Finally, the futures have caught a favorable breeze. Use the 1372.80 target shown as a minimum upside projection for the near term. _______ UPDATE (April 11, 5:28 p.m.):  Yet another failed rally? Today's thrust to 1369.40 came close to the target, but not close enough that we should be even slightly impressed. Remember, it must EXCEED

Market historians have pored over stock charts from the late 1920s, attempting to show that share prices danced closely in step with the political ups and downs of the Smoot Hawley bill as it moved through Congress. The law, which raised tariffs on more than 20,000 imported items, was enacted in June 1930 -- close enough to the October 1929 Crash to suggest a causal connection. However, because we are currently witnessing the effects of tariff-war fears on the markets in real time, we can see the fallacy of this idea. Indeed, a portfolio manager would be committing professional suicide if he or she tried to shift allocations using tariff-related news as a timing device.  On Thursday, for instance, after shares had risen robustly that day, an analyst purported to explain it with the following claptrap: “The markets are now beginning to see through the bluster of negotiations and they’re dialing back some of their most significant fears of a full on trade war." Unfortunately for this clown, and for Wall Street's media shills at Bloomberg, MSNBC et al. who are paid to take clowns seriously, especially bullish clowns, stocks went into a steep dive just hours later, triggered by hawkish remarks on trade made by Trump during a speech in West Virginia. Scandal-Seekers In the months and years ahead, we are certain to see many more violent swings in the stock market, some of which will appear to correlate with Trump's latest pronouncement on tariffs. Unfortunately, it seems all too plausible that any such volatility will be in the context of an epochal bear market. When it happens, let's remind ourselves that it is not tariff talk per se that has caused the swings, a bear market or a Second Great Depression; but rather, broad cyclical changes in the

The June contract was down a whopping 78 points on Friday at its nadir, but from a technical standpoint it was just noise.  Since the selloff was prompted by Trumped-up news concerning the President's latest thoughts on tariffs, perhaps we should have bought the decline hand-over-fist.  One other reason we might have had for doing so was that all of the lunatic stocks -- i.e., the small handful of turbo-charged stocks portfolio manages use to hyper-leverage the epic hoax of a sustained bull market -- appear to be in conventional bullish corrections. Accordingly, I'll suggest using the chart (inset) as a road map when the new week begins. It's always unpredictable how DaBoyz will play their cards Sunday night, but my hunch is that merely moderate weakness would be a sign the Masters of the Universe are eager to buy 'em ahead of Monday's opening bell. Since we should always allow for an alternative scenario, let me add this: If the futures open down more than 20-25 points, bulls could be in for another rough day, whether attributable to tariff headlines or not. _______ UPDATE (April 9, 1:10 a.m.): DaBoyz could not contain their gluttony Sunday evening and have opened index futures with an unabashed lurch higher.  For now, use the 2640.88 midpoint Hidden Pivot shown in the chart as a minimum upside target. ______ UPDATE (1o:41  a.m.):  Target hit and slightly exceeded.  I will update with a new target if there's a request for it in the chat room.

The stock market seems particularly opportunistic of news at the moment, enjoying one of those occasional periods when bad news is good and good news is even better.  Yesterday the yo-yos who invent a stupid reason each day to explain the rise or fall of stocks attributed the moderate rally to our supposedly diminished fear of a trade war. I kid you not.  Just a few days ago, we were listing out some of the thousands of items we buy from the Chinese that will be affected by Trump tariffs. Lo, by Thursday morning, our concern about such things had melted away like lemon drops.  "The markets are now beginning to see through the bluster of negotiations and they’re dialing back some of their most significant fears of a full on trade war," explained an analyst quoted at Bloomberg.com. As surely as night follows day, however, I can guarantee you that this "dialing back" will be reversed at some point in the near future, and that stocks will be said to have fallen at that time due to our "renewed concerns" about tariffs. Rinse and repeat. I'm so glad that I'm not some talking head on Bloomberg or MSNBC who needs to embarrass himself each day providing a "reason" for the stock market's behavior.  Nothing could be more obvious than that the stock market's cyclical ups and downs create -- meaning, shape our perceptions of -- the news rather than the other way around. ________ BULLETIN (10:37 p.m. EDT):  Even I could not have imagined how quickly the usual idiots would flip the switch on Wall Street's latest brand of hysteria, Tariff  Anxiety.  Trump made some remarks this evening about jacking trade levies on Chinese goods by a further $100 billion and -- presto! -- index futures got bombed in

We watched a $5000 trade – two of them that totaled $5000, actually – unfold in AMZN during this session, getting a step ahead of signals that would have gotten us short initially, then long pennies off a minor low. It would have taken a huge sum of cash to do this scalp-trade, but that is not the point. The patterns we identified that set up the trades can be found in stocks of all prices – even $20 stocks or penny stocks. If you can find them in AMZN, you can find them elsewhere for a small fraction of the killer-stock price.

Like you, I can only guess whether today's 800-point reversal will turn out to be meaningful. From a technical standpoint it was just noise, since the rally failed to exceed even a single prior peak on the daily chart. This was also true for the S&Ps.  Their respective charts could turn bullish quickly, however, with just a little more thrust, since multiple prior peaks lie not far above Wednesday's closing prices.

It's never too early to go on record with an insanely bullish target, especially with so many respectable gurus seemingly convinced The Top is in. Accordingly, I am proffering the 2984.75 target shown just so that we don't get caught with our pants down if it's achieved. That would equate to a Dow rally to around 27000. Pivoteers will notice that the futures officially became a theoretical 'mechanical' buy on the March 22 pullback to the green line. We opted out because of the $5700 entry risk per contract, but the 'buy' signal remains valid nonetheless. If we had done the trade, it would have been with the presumption that ES is no worse than a 50-50 bet to reach the target. Odds would increase to around 60% if the rally exceeds the red line, but we'll wait for it to happen before jumping on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, yesterday's seemingly powerful reversal did not exceed a single prior peak on the daily chart. However, that would be remedied in very bullish fashion if buyers are able to push this brick above the 2679.75 peak labeled in the chart.  That's just 34 points above -- an easy chip shot the way things looked at Wednesday's close. _______ UPDATE (April 5, 5:05 p.m.):  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The futures were very slowly on their way to the 2692.50 target shown when the bell put them into an even deeper coma. They tripped no fewer than four 'mechanical' buy signals intraday, so night owls are likely to enjoy a felicitous ride to the target, even if it requires patience. A 'camouflage' entry using the 5-minute (or less) chart is suggested.

Stocks lifted off late in Tuesday's session, inspired by who-knows-what.  Sometimes it's hard to predict what kind of news is going to warm Wall Street's obsidian heart, but there are days when bulls seem to thrive on bad news. There was plenty enough of that, including some headlines about the ever-expanding -- at least in Trump's mind -- list of tariffs to be levied against China: everything from semiconductor chips to medical devices to flamethrowers, according to a story at Bloomberg.com.  Trump also kept the heat on Amazon, his least favorite company, with an unfriendly tweet. AMZN shares shrugged it off and rallied sharply in the final hour. "Up yours!" traders seemed to be telling the President.  If that's what makes stocks fly these days, then the President's next snit can't come too soon.