Rick Ackerman

The closest Hidden Pivot above with potential stopping power lies at 236.59. You should trade with a bullish bias until it is reached. If you've held a long position on the way up, use a portion of the profits to cushion a stop-loss on any shorts initiated at the target. A 236.75 stop-loss should suffice. I would not recommend a 'mechanical' buy if DIA pulls back to p2=228.35 (see inset), but you can use this to set up a 'camouflage' trade on the three-minute chart that would limit entry risk to perhaps 0.10-0.12 per share. _______ UPDATE (Oct 25, 8:34 p.m.): DIA has pulled back hard after peaking at 234.70, well shy of the 236.59 target. It remains valid, but we'll move to the sidelines while DIA catches its breath. _______ UPDATE (Oct 31, 8:08 p.m.): I've proffered a bull market target at 23,642 for the Dow Industrials in Wednesday's Morning Line that corroborates and affirms the one given above for DIA. Check out the Morning Line chart if you want to be persuaded this target could matter._______ UPDATE (Nov 1, 9:46 p.m.): A slight correction is necessary for the DJIA target, to 23,665.  This is even closer to the corresponding DIA target noted above. We should watch closely for synchronous tops to form, since this could prove to be a very  tradable event. If you place a bet, near-the-money puts with 7-10 days left on them are recommended._______ UPDATE (Nov 12, 6:08 p.m.): Cancel the trade, since DIA's lovely and usually obliging uptrend has gone all fuzzy on us. The target remains valid, but I wouldn't devote much attention to it as the new week begins.

A Bloomberg headline on Friday averred that gold had "plunged" due to the "mysterious" sale of four million ounces. The reality was somewhat different, as the chart shows. Gold dove, to be sure, but not very far in relation to price action over the last couple of months. Concerning the mysterious seller, we're probably better off not knowing, since the hacks who report the news would probably find a way to trace the trade back to Trump, or to the Swiss central bank. Or your grandma.  And then where would we be?  Anyway, the chart says as much as we need to know right now -- i.e., that bulls and bears have been locked in a duel, trying to kill each other with rubber-tipped scissors. The 1254.10 downside target we've been using for weeks remains viable in the meantime, but we can put it aside if the futures rally to touch 1293.00. _______ UPDATE (Nov 15, 12:26 p.m.): Today's gratuitously nasty head-fake actually created a picture-perfect impulse leg on the hourly chart, so bulls needn't quite despair. Let's see if they can leverage this set-up for all it's worth -- namely, a pop to the 1295.80 target. _______ UPDATE (Nov 16, 5:15 p.m.): Thursday's sloppy histrionics slightly lowered the target, to 1294.20. A push past p=1284.60 would be a downpayment on it.

Bitcoin's bold rally warrants a drum-roll, since it narrowly exceeded a long-term Hidden Pivot target at 7353 on Wednesday with the greatest of ease. This all but clinches more upside at least to the next, 7562, as far as I'm concerned. Both of these 'hidden' resistance points were proffered earlier on the Rick's Picks home page, and no one who follows my touts should be surprised at how quickly Bitcoin chewed through not just the pivots, but presumably daunting round-number resistance at 7000. Now, if buyers shred their way past 7562, they would warning bears and skeptics to dive for cover and shut up. My gut feeling is that the 7562 resistance will give way easily, considering the effortless push past 7353 that has just occurred.  It is the highest projection I can offer using the daily chart. We'll have much better price information shortly, by the way, since the CME is putting the finishing touches on a Bitcoin futures contract slated to begin trading before 2018.  With the much greater liquidity and price history this speculative vehicle will provide, I should be able to improve very significantly on the accuracy and usefulness of my forecasts._______ UPDATE (Nov 12, 6:06 p.m.): Last week's record-high 7521 fell just shy of the 7562 target given above. My gut feeling is that the target will be achieved, and soon, but buyers would need to push this vehicle easily past it to suggest they've got the moxie to keep driving bitcoin steeply higher in November. Click here for a free, two-week trial subscription that will allow you to stay on top of Bitcoin and other trading vehicles in a precise way that you may never have imagined possible. And click here if you want to learn how to do it yourself. This will be

Prayerful bears hoping Thursday morning's selloff might be the beginning of something more satisfying had better take a look at the charts of such world-beaters as AMZN, AAPL, GOOG and MSFT.  All took the selling easily in stride, ending the day with the bullish flags on their respective charts undiminished in potency. Under the circumstances, the weakness appears to have been not merely harmless but constructive.  Looking just ahead, if this evening's short-squeeze on index futures continues into the wee hours, it would make the prospect of new record highs within the next day or two all but a foregone conclusion.

The buy-the-dips crowd was out in brute force Thursday, presumably scared witless that they might miss the next big rally. Wall Street's characteristically humorless burlesque began with a steep selloff early in the day, followed by a sharp bounce into the close that left shorts once again begging for mercy.  After being down more than 30 points in the early going, the E-Mini S&Ps surged to close off less than 10 points.  Ordinarily I would be dismissive of the rally because it came from a too-obvious place -- i.e., just above the v-shaped low created exactly week earlier by a vicious but fleeting selloff.  However, given the urgency of this evening's short-covering, and the fact that no dip that has occurred since 2009 has been other than a great buying opportunity, I'm prepared to see the December contract hit a marginal new record high to end the week. This is a more bullish outlook than I aired just an hour ago on Facebook. But judging from the ratcheting desperation behind tonight's ascent, my expectations have changed in favor of bulls. _______ UPDATE (Nov 10, 8:54 a.m.): An overnight correction bound for as low as 2558.50 (click here for chart) has bounced from the pattern's midpoint support. The rally would need to exceed the 2582.00 'external' peak shown, however, to suggest bulls are about to go back on the warpath.

A year after Trump defeated Hillary, the stock market has racked up its biggest post-election gain since 1945, when FDR was re-elected to a short-lived fourth term. Of course, Trump had no more to do with the current rally than Roosevelt or his successor, Harry S Truman, did with the post-War surge in shares. The stock market and the U.S. economy will always move in broad cycles far bigger than mere presidencies and the vainglorious strivers who typically hold the office. As such, it is arguably just a matter of luck that some Presidents get to preside over relatively good economic times (i.e., Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan) while others, less fortunate, have occupied the White House during relatively hard times or downturns (i.e., George W. Bush and Richard Nixon). Tax 'Reform'? Yeah, Sure... It is laughable that pundits, economists and the usual news-media hacks are attributing the stock market's crazed ascent in part to the dim prospect of what passes for tax 'reform' on Capitol Hill.  We've already glimpsed enough of the current process to know that, in the end, it will amount to just another stinking heap of handouts to various interest groups, none of whose priorities could even remotely be tied to a fairer, simpler or economically more efficient tax code.  Trump will grab as much credit as he can for the stock market's ebullience, but only an imbecile could believe he caused it.  Indeed, there should be little doubt that if Hillary had won the Dow would still be trading above 23,000 -- albeit for an entirely different set of ginned-up reasons, many of them as ridiculous as the current, purported tax 'reform'. Moreover, any dubious economic benefits we might stand to gain over the long haul from tax 'reform' have probably already been discounted tenfold

Securities markets were flatlining as usual during this presentation, but we were nonetheless able to identify some opportunities that could prove to be exploitable later. AMZN, Comex Gold, Tesla and Boeing were all considered, and even though none gave us a green light to trade, merely pondering their charts was illuminating. This recording includes the Q&A session that followed the class, so it runs about seven minutes longer than usual.

The futures did all we'd asked of them Wednesday, pushing above a prior peak on the daily chart at 1286.20. Somehow, I still don't trust the rally, so we'll take a conservative approach to getting long. Specifically, I'll suggest using a 'mechanical' trigger at 1300.60 (i.e., the green line) if and when it is exceeded and then touched on a pullback meeting our simple criteria for this type of trade. I am suggesting a 'trigger' here because we can use it to get long via another tactic, 'camouflage', which has the potential to lower the $3800-per-contract entry risk to more like $60-$120 theoretical.  The trade will take at least 4-6 days to set up properly, so there's no rush.

I've left my wild-eyed projections for some FAANMG stocks listed below unchanged, since the group shows no sign of slowing down. Even when these stocks are merely marking time they always make a little headway, like a running back grinding out a few extra yards with four defenders on his back.  AMZN, for one, seems incapable of retracing its steps for more than a few days as it moves, hell-bent, toward the 1181.56 target shown (click on inset). Given the way buyers blew past the 1056.66 'midpoint Hidden Pivot,' it is almost unimaginable that they won't make it to the higher number.  Meanwhile, corrections have been too shallow to allow us to get aboard 'mechanically,' leaving us with the work-intensive task of attempting it on charts of lesser degree (i.e., 'camouflage'), or taking position overnight ahead of the all-too-frequent gap-up openings.  With or without us, though, and come hell or high water, this stock is headed to at least 1181.56.