Rick Ackerman

This session was the equivalent of a tapas menu, with some small but appetizing selections that were better savored than consumed. We found nothing to trade in real time, but there were a few potential opportunities for later. As always, pondering trade setups we’d never seen before was a useful feature of the lesson.

A week shortened by the Memorial Day holiday produced a session filled with gratuitous price swings that left the broad averages largely unchanged. Even so, shorts were caught in the ringer at the closing bell, suggesting it's possible the S&Ps will trade at a new all-time high in the early going Thursday. If they end the day in record territory, bears had better dive for cover ahead of the weekend.  Fridays have not lived up to their reputation for freakiness in recent months, but this one could be an exception.

Volatility has gone brain-dead, as today's chart makes clear. What this implies is that 'everyone' has bet the opposite or is hedged up the wazoo with puts, calls or straddles against a stock market melt-up or -down. Such an event is inevitable, but not on any time schedule that traders have been able to predict. We've got a small bet down ourselves, having hit .666 in our last three at-bats.  Two of the trades precisely caught trampoline lows in VXX within hours, allowing subscribers who followed my explicit guidance to easily quadruple their money. Some who held onto a portion of their initial position reported doing far better. Past performance is of course no guarantee of future success, but the current bet, notwithstanding VXX's relentless sinking spell, is one I can surely live with.  See my tout below for explicit details.  If you don't subscribe, click here for a free two-week trial that will allow you not only to view the tout, but to enter the Rick's Picks chat room, where great traders from around the world gather 24/7.

Stocks were so quiet Monday night that one could temporarily lose sight of the fact that these times in which we live are dangerously interesting. Index futures have been on a holy tear, rising almost vertically from the 'Trump-disillusionment bottom' that was deftly engineered by DaBoyz on May 18. Notwithstanding this evening's post-holiday lull, there's little reason to think the stock market's wilding spree won't resume this week when some insignificant piece of news triggers off yet another short-covering panic. I've advised using a 2439.00 rally target for the E-Mini S&Ps that may have sounded ambitious a couple of weeks ago, but at present it equates to a measly 200-point rally in the Dow Industrials.

We hold a long-term position of 200 shares with a cost basis that has been reduced by profit-taking to 120.36. Although the chart shown allows us to project a move to as high as 128.40, we'll use just the rightmost section of it to produce a more conservative target at 125.67. However, either interpretation will impose a crucial midpoint resistance on bulls not far above. The first, tied to 125.67, lies at 124.08; the second, tied to 128.40, lies at 124.16. This implies some very heavy supply in the range between those numbers, so we should monitor the action closely if and when TLT gets there. An easy move past this 'double-trouble' layer of supply would significantly shorten the odds of a continuation to at least 125.67, and thence 128.40. _______ UPDATE (May 31, 6:44 p.m. ET): If and when TLT gets with 0.05 points of the 125.67 target, short one June 30 127 call for each hundred shares you currently hold. This will turn the position into a covered write. I estimate that the calls will be trading for around 0.90-1.00 at that time, but that's just a guess. Check back in the chat room for further guidance in real time when the trade gets close.  I will also send out an email alert in real time, so make sure 'Email Notifications' on your account dashboard is switched on if you want to stay closely apprised. _______ UPDATE (Jun 2, 12:34 p.m. EDT): TLT has taken a powerful leap this morning, peaking a dime above the 125.67 Hidden Pivot that had served as our minimum price objective in recent days. The calls have traded no lower than 0.90 since TLT got near the target, so we now hold 200 shares with a 120.36 cost basis and are short two

A dreary week of tedious oscillations produce no special trading opportunities, although it did leave a potential bottom-fishing set-up for the week ahead. Specifically, I'll recommend bidding 0.50 for four June 9 155 calls, good through Tuesday. The bid is based on a Hidden Pivot target for the calls, but also on a delta calculation of their likely value if AAPL should drop to the 151.71 midpoint Hidden Pivot support shown in the chart. The alignment of two indicators should give us better odds to pick a bottom, but you should stop yourself out of the options nevertheless if they hit 0.30. If the stop is hit and the stock demolishes the 151.71 support, it could continue falling to as low as 148.54 before it finds traction. ________ UPDATE (May 30, 7:04 p.m. ET): Time decay is ravaging the puts, so let's go further out in time: Bid 0.80 for four June 16 155 calls, good through Thursday. Stay tuned to the chat room and your email notifications if they get close, since I may need to adjust the bid. _______ UPDATE (May 31, 6:50 p.m.): Cancel the bid for the puts, since the stock's weakness today put them well out of reach. Even so, AAPL will have to crush the 151.71 'hidden' support to put into play the downside target at 148.54.

I'm enthusiastic about the 13.38 target shown, since the pattern that produced it meets our Hidden Pivot criteria perfectly even though it may not be so obvious to others who use similar formations to trade and forecast. Indeed, the pattern is so enticing because it's so gnarly, and that's why we had a bid in for call options on Friday. The  order went unfilled because the options traded no lower than 0.57, but I'll recommend using a 0.40 bid for June 16 13.50 calls on Tuesday, since it could get filled if VXX falls closer to the target than the 13.45 low recorded in Friday.  Do NOT pay up, since that's not our style. Subscribers also hold four June 2 13.50 calls for 0.45 as a result of a trade posted to The Scoreboard last week. Originally I'd said I would track them only on The Scoreboard, but to simplify the accounting I've added them to this tout. ______ UPDATE (May 30, 7:13 p.m. ET): Raise the bid to 0.45 for four June 16 13.50 calls, day order. That's a Hidden Pivot target for the options, and it looks like a promising spot to try bottom-fishing. VXX is sitting right on the 13.38 'hidden' support, having exceeded it by 3 cents intraday. I still expect a bounce and would be surprised if it fails to materialize. If I'm wrong, we'll probably see more downside to at least 12.47, or even 11.26 -- significantly lower than this betting vehicle has ever traded before. _______ UPDATE (May 31, 6:56 p.m.): The puts we sought to buy traded no lower than 0.50, so there was nothing done on the order. Re-enter the bid ahead of Thursday's opening and make it a day order. _______ UPDATE (Jun 1, 11:14 p.m.): We added four calls

Friday's upthrust maxed out my targets on the monthly chart, topping just a few points beneath a Hidden Pivot at 978.35 that has been more than seven years in coming. Could this be the end of the line for one of the bull market's star performers?  It's possible, since the target is as clear and compelling as Hidden Pivots get. At the very least, we should expect to see a correction lasting for perhaps 8-12 weeks from somewhere very close to the target -- meaning within a few dollars of it. That would imply there's still room next week for a rally of $10 or so, or as much as $30 if traders should be irresistibly drawn to the magical number 1000. Any higher than that and I'd need to use a target calculated from a lesser-trend extension of the major trend. That would yield a 1029.04 price objective, but if it too were to be shoved aside, GOOG would be in uncharted waters, beyond my ability to to tell you within a few dollars where it is likely to make a major top. If this ain't it, that would be something new in the annals of Hidden Pivot analysis. ______ UPDATE (7:06 p.m. EDT): The arse bandits who manipulate this stock for a living trapped bulls on the opening bar with a head-fake that topped less than a dollar from my 978.35 target. That could be it for a while, since buyers are likely to be skittish for at least the next couple of days. If so, look for more weakness to the 950.21 downside target shown in the chart. _______ UPDATE (June 1, 11:20 p.m.): The sleazeballs did it again, Let's see if buyers return for a third heaping portion of rancid meat on Friday. [They didn't. GOOG

AMZN stopped just shy of daunting resistance on Friday following a gap-up opening a day earlier to within inches of it. Actually, there are two resistance points that could conceivably impede the stock's wilding-spree-on-steroids: the psychologically important 1000 mark, and a Hidden Pivot resistance slightly above it at 1000.41. My gut feeling is that neither is likely to contain the rally, at least not for long, if for no other reason than that 1000 seems like too obvious a place for the stock's nearly nine-year bull market to end. As always, we need only get AMZN right to get the entire stock market right, since the 1000-pound gorilla of the retailing world is the most important bellwether of them all -- a company that sells actual things to the entire planet and which invests enormous sums in infrastructure to do so as efficiently and profitably as possible. _______ UPDATE (May 30, 7:57 p.m. ET): Today's modest rally very slightly exceeded the 1000.41 target, but with this stock it's always a good idea to have a higher price objective in mind just in case. I'll recommend using 1018.73 for this purpose, and here's the chart.  Notice the very interesting price action at the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance: two head-butts to confirm the pattern followed by a blow-through late in March that shortened the odds of a move to at least 1018.73. You can try shorting there using your own plan, but I'd suggest a stop loss no wider than $2.50 in the underlying and put options with no more than three weeks left on them.  _______ UPDATE (May 31, 7:11 p.m. EDT): The stock's sleazy handlers performed an impressive feat Wednesday, trapping bulls, and then bears, in the first hour with nasty feints in both directions. AMZN was on the rise