Rick Ackerman

Looking to augment our long-term position in TLT, we spent more time than usual poring over its charts. The result is a detailed road map for the next few weeks that in theory could provide the basis for a bull trade. We also looked closely at gold, examining in exhaustive detail the rationale for bullish projections up to around $1462. The election night peak is the key hurdle, and this lesson explains exactly why.

AAPL looked poised to move higher after spending Wednesday consolidating the previous day's strong gains.  We are using a 168.33 target for the stock, which if achieved would likely drag the broad averages along with it. The target lies $5 above current levels, and at the rate the stock has been rising it could take another 3-5 days before it is reached.  It is a very important price objective that has been more than four years in coming, and if and when it is touched we should be prepared not only for a trend reversal in AAPL, but in the stock market as well.

This tout is mainly for information value, since the opportunity to buy puts on DIA at the perfect price -- in this case, Sep 15 218 puts for 1.18 -- has passed. My rule of thumb is to by puts or calls only when we expect them to go in-the-black within one minute. This implies buying them when the underlying vehicle is hitting a targeted high or low.  DIA did so midway into Wednesday's session when it touched the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 219.23 that I hadn't noticed Tuesday night.  I am displaying this chart after-the-fact because it still has predictive value. Indeed, if the bull market is about to end, we should see DIA pull back from p and fall beneath C=215.73. Alternatively, if DIA forges higher in the first hour or two on Thursday, that would imply it's headed to new all-time highs. In either case, we'll trust what we see, not what we might wish for.

The Dow finished with a modest gain of 57 points on Tuesday, but it took a 190-point short squeeze reversal off a weak, deftly engineered opening to accomplish this.  Much as I'd like to diss the rally, noting that it failed to generate a bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart, it has enough good things going for it technically that it must be respected.  Even so, I'd be looking for a potentially very important top at 22283, implying a 418-rally from current levels -- especially if this Hidden Pivot target is achieved simultaneously with an extremely important one in AAPL at 168.33 that lies a little more than $5 above.

Despite the deftly engineered ferocity of Tuesday's short-squeeze rally, I doubt that it is destined for new all-time highs, at least not imminently.  DaBoyz milked a global sigh of relief for all it was worth when Kim Jong Un-sane failed to do much more than lob a single missile Japan's way. But the rally failed to exceed the previous day's high, and it also failed to generate a bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart. Accordingly, I'll recommend setting the snooze alarm for 2468.75 on the hourly chart, since that's where this presumptive bull-trap surge would begin to look interesting.

With a sharp lurch higher, December Gold has broken above the 1301.20 resistance I'd flagged as crucial to the intermediate-to-long-term outlook.  The rally is encouraging, but we should remain cautious for two reasons. For one, the move was catalyzed by news that Kim Jong Un-sane had fired a missile over Japan. As someone pointed out in the Rick's Picks chat room on Tuesday, however, traders who have faded market moves caused by seemingly shocking news have only made money.  Indeed, every geopolitical crisis in memory, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Cuban missile showdown turned out to have been a great opportunity to buy stocks at relative bargain prices.  DaBoyz used these crises and countless others to shake down shares so that they could by more of them at bargain prices. This was clearly the case here. On Sunday evening, index futures plummeted on news of Kim's brazen aggression.  But Wall Street, cynical as ever, treated the short-lived panic as a fire sale. The result was that, by the end of Tuesday's session, traders had reversed a 134-point selloff on the opening to close the Dow up 57 points -- a 190-point reversal. The second reason we should treat gold's 'breakout' cautiously is that it is still well shy of election night's watershed top at 1353.00. Until such time as that high is exceeded, the 1462.70 rally target given here earlier will in my estimation be more theoretical than probable. For now, caveat emptor. _______ UPDATE (Aug 31, 10:36 p..m. EDT): Thursday's stall at 1327.60, a midpoint Hidden Pivot shown in this chart, implies December Gold will hit 1352.90 if and when it pushes decisively past the lower number. In the meantime, a pullback to the green line would be a 'mechanical' buy, stop 1302.20._________ UPDATE (Sep 5,

North Korea's whack-job dictator has reportedly lobbed a missile over Japan, causing index futures to plunge Monday evening. So far, DaBoyz are acting almost as crazy as Mr. Kim, treating this unprecedented act of aggression as a buying opportunity. They've pulled their bids, allowing stocks to fall steeply enough to discount any outcome short of Armageddon, and now they are actually effecting a bounce to unload shares they bought on the news. Kim Jong Un-sane will get much of the credit if it turns out that a bear market has begun.  But this is not how the stock market works. As long as the delusion persists that Wall Street fears North Korea, stocks will remain vulnerable to a sigh-of-relief rally when Kim backs off. That's how bull traps are set, and it is what I'd suggest that you look for.

This is bitcoin's first appearance on the Rick's Picks home page. I'd lacked good charts before now, but this was remedied by a Tradestation-savvy subscriber who supplied the proper symbol during the all-day "requests" session I held today online.  Bitcoin's manic swoons and rallies should pose no particular problem for my forecasts, since, from a Hidden Pivot perspective, all trading vehicles are just dots that move up, down and sideways on charts.  This one moves so violently that precise swing-highs and -lows should be relatively easy to nail. That is often the case with Hidden Pivot analysis: the crazier the price action seems, the more closely the swings conform to the abcd patterns we use to forecast and trade. If you're skeptical, just follow my bitcoin touts for a while and judge for yourself. As far as I could tell, decent technical forecasts for bitcoin have been hard to come by, so let me get you started with this one: If and when NYXBT pops decisively above the 4480 midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance shown, it'll become an odds-on bet to reach a minimum 5080. For now, a pullback to the green line (4179) would be a 'mechanical' buy, stop 3878, for a shot at 5080. _______ UPDATE (Sep 1, 8:18 a.m. EDT):  The uptrend is tracking my 5080 target nicely, and the decisive move past p=4480 has all but clinched a run-up to it. (An unlikely at this point) pullback to x=4179 would be a mechanical 'buy', stop 3878.________ UPDATE (Sep 5, 10:4 p.m.): Like AAPL, the Bitcoin Index has fallen sharply after stalling almost precisely at the 'secondary' Hidden Pivot of an ABCD rally pattern.  This has dangerous implications, for reasons I have noted elsewhere on this page. When this occurs, a stock stands a good chance of retreating

With respect to the health of the bull market, it is crucial that AMZN not start overshooting its correction targets, even minor ones.  Today's chart shows the stock an inch shy of that threshold. The 949.79 target, a Hidden Pivot support, slightly alters the one given here previously. In visual terms, although the support was slightly exceeded by Friday's downtrend, the overshoot was within permissible bounds. But if it should be decisively exceeded Sunday night or Monday morning -- a strong possibility if the crisis with North Korea escalates -- that would hold potentially bearish implications for the stock market going forward.  We'll wait to see what the day brings, but please note that it would take a move above the point 'c' high of the pattern, 1031.99, to lift AMZN tenuously from the danger zone._____ UPDATE (Aug 15, 6:14 p.m.): After falling to within an inch of the 949.79 target flagged above, AMZN has rallied $40. It's still not out of the woods, however, and there is nothing in the hourly chart to suggest the stock is about to blast off for new all-time highs above July 27's record 1083.31. More immediately, bulls would need to push past the 1006.40 peak that I've labeled to suggest they're capable of this. _______ UPDATE (Aug 18, 1:55 a.m.): If the stock finds no support at 951.01, it could fall all the way to 910.27 before getting traction. Here's the relevant chart, with a correction pattern that uses some parts of an older one. _______ UPDATE (Aug 22, 12:07 a.m.): Monday's weakness shortened the odds of a further fall to 910.27.  Click here for updated chart.________UPDATE (Aug 22, 6:18 p.m.): Tuesday's downside penetration of a midpoint HP support at 951.01 turns out not to have been decisive enough to make further slippage