Rick Ackerman

Headline writers hyperventilated last week over the prospect of higher capital gains taxes while the stock market took it in stride. Biden wants to double the levy on long-term investments to 39.6%, ending a felicitous run at 20% that was enacted 40 years ago under President Reagan. The Wealthy Will Fight Him to the Death, proclaimed a teaser above a Los Angeles Times column. And Bloomberg.com hoisted this 'Mayday!' above the fold: Rich Americans Face Biden Tax with Anger, Denial and Grief'. They'll get over it, as we well know; they always have. And what is the secret of their Zen forbearance? It is this: Make so much money that even after giving half of it to the revenuers, there will be plenty left to summer in the Hamptons and charter Mediterranean yachts without feeling pinched. And now more than ever, there is consolation in knowing that whatever sums The Government's left hand taketh pales in comparison to what the right hand giveth -- namely, 'stimulus' that all but promises to inflate asset values to infinity. In the unlikely event it is enacted, Biden's proposal would put well-heeled investors in high-tax states like New York and California over the 50% threshold for total taxes paid. The well-to-do have been fleeing to low-tax jurisdictions such as Nevada, Florida and Texas anyway, but a tax hike would undoubtedly hasten the exodus, even of rich Biden backers who disingenuously claim to love Big Government wholeheartedly. In the meantime, although year-end tax selling could increase if talk of a tax hike grows serious, it seems unlikely to faze a bullish herd that has stampeded through a global pandemic and 20% unemployment. Bitcoin No Tax Haven Dramatic headlines aside, the stock market shrugged off the news much as it has been doing ever since the

The 4905.75 target is as high as I can project for this bull market.  Although it lies nearly 20% above, this hardly seems ambitious considering the ease with which buyers have crushed Hidden Pivot resistances of lesser, albeit significant, degree over the last twelve months.  Neither the target nor the secondary pivot (p2) at 4222.81 will be precisely correct for trading purposes, since the chart is a blend of many monthly contracts stretching back more than a decade. But they should prove good enough for government work, meaning we can try shorting very near them using 'reverse ABC' set-ups.  We can also use the Hidden Pivots at 4200.44 and 4536.50 given here previously for precise targeting, risk management and getting short. They are likely to work well, since both come from a clear pattern associated with the single-contract month of June. ______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 8:53 p.m.): Sellers pounded the hell out of a Hidden Pivot support at 4152.00, so I wouldn't put too much store in the weak rally that has followed.  The yellow flag is out, with slippage in prospect toward a low last week at 4113.00 that begs to be tested. Here's a chart that shows everything. ______ UPDATE (Apr 20, 6:30 p.m.): The test of support came expectedly as expected, but bulls did not exactly pass with flying colors. Now, if the futures were to close lower on Wednesday for a third consecutive day, that would be extremely unusual and probably bearish. Let's see what the day brings.  _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:00 p.m.): Shorts tripped over themselves and soiled their pants, so eager were they to get' em back today. A key takeaway from the rally is this: If you initiate a long index position at the end of a second consecutive down day, you

Although bitcoin got savaged Sunday morning when it opened more than $11,000 beneath Friday's close, the plunge would not have stopped out a long position acquired 'mechanically' at p=$57,676, the red line. I had not recommended the trade explicitly, but I am mentioning it now to buttress your awareness of how powerful upthrusts such as we have seen in bitcoin tend to produce 'mechanical' buy signals that are profitable. Realize as well that 'dynamic' moves invariably beget violent counterswings such as Sunday's. In any event, the 72,230 target of the pattern shown remains viable, as does possible resistance at 66,680, the 'D' target of another pattern.  A relapse is possible as well, and that's why I'll suggest partial-profit-taking when possible if you did the trade on your own initiative. A second buy signal would be triggered if the relapse were to touch the green line at 50,400. _______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 9:26 p.m. ET): There's no question that a pullback to the green line (50,400) would trigger a quite enticing 'mechanical' buy, especially since no set-up of this magnitude has failed to produce a profit. The trade is certain to be telling if it triggers, and if it works, my gut feeling is that the turn will have come not at the green line, but from around 48,804, a 'd' pivot culled from the decline since last week's record high at 64,858.  I will create a tracking position in any case, but my advice is to paper-trade this one unless you have made far more on bitcoin than the nearly $30k you'd be risking on four lots. _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:02 p.m.): What a thrashing bulls and bears are getting! That's why I will continue to focus on the bigger picture, as above, tuning out the noise. _______ UPDATE

I've stretched the pattern to produce a 413.45 target that maxes out the monthly chart and which is roughly congruent with a long-term target at 4905 in the E-Mini S&P.  The pattern uses a 'marquee' low for point 'A', which is not ideal. In this case, however, it seemed logical in preference to either of the indistinct, one- and two-off lows recorded in 2010 and 2011.  Bulls have pushed past the 297.98 midpoint resistance with authority, shortening the odds that D=413.45 will be reached. For now, though, the secondary pivot (p2) at 355.61 can be used as a minimum upside objective. I will be closely monitoring price action there to gauge how much buying power remains. There may be an opportunity to get short at p2, so stay tuned to the chat room or your email 'Notifications' if you care. _____ UPDATE (Apr 20, 6:36 p.m. ET): Weakness stretched into a second day. This is somewhat unusual these days, but a third 'down' day would be almost freakish. Wait and watch! _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 8:16 a.m.): DIA has receded slightly from Monday's all-time high. If this is a Titanic disaster in the making, the ship has just left Liverpool. ______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:06 p.m.): Three straight down days? The odds are better that the sun will fail to rise in the East tomorrow. The lesson is that you'll have a hard time losing money if you take home a long position at the end of a second straight down day on Wall Street. ______ UPDATE (Apr 22, 10:09): It's refreshing to imagine that today's moderate selloff was the start of a catastrophe, but I doubt it. The 345.33 rally target in this chart looks all but certain to be hit, given the gap through p=332.98 on the first

With Friday's stall very precisely at p=26.37, we are about to find out what this rally, now in its third week, is made of.  A decisive push past this midpoint Hidden Pivot, especially with a close above it, would signal an imminent ascent to the 29.00 target (inset). For reasons that are technically too involved to get into, let me say that the rally pattern is quite fetching, implying that any 'mechanical' trigger signaled is likely to yield a profit. Risk is another matter, however, since the spacing between entry levels implies initial theoretical risk of $6600 per contract. We can work with it in real time, most effectively in crowdsource mode, so please signal your interest at appropriate times. _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:13 p.m. ET):  Burn, baby, burn! The May contract popped through p=26.37 with such brio that it is now and odds-on bet to achieve a minimum 29.00 in this bull cycle, which began from 23.74 on March 31. (And congratulations to 'Farmer', who not only nailed the low to-the-day, but provided a high-decibel heads-up in the Rick's Picks chat room when the futures were bottoming out.) The pattern we've been using promises to work well for 'mechanical' entries on the way up, so stay tuned. _____ UPDATE (Apr 22, 10:14 p.m.): Well, okay, I jumped the gun. Let's stipulate that the futures close above p=26.37 for two straight days before we break out the Rondel Brut bubbly.

June Gold cleared a key hurdle on Friday by an inch, triggering a theoretical buy signal tied to a 2083.90 target. First things first, however, meaning we should set our sights no higher than p=1880.10 for the time being. This midpoint Hidden Pivot can serve as a minimum upside objective for a climb that would take about 2-3 weeks, assuming the bullishness evident in Silver is present. Even though the rally has yet to generate an impulse leg on the daily chart, this is the most bullish price action we've seen in gold since last summer. A longer-term chart allows for a projection of 2286, (A=681 in October, 2008), but it would take two weekly closes above 1976 to warrant getting excited about it. _______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 9:45 p.m. ET): Bulls got sandbagged in the early going, generating an impulsive decline that projects to as low as 1752.90 over the near-term.  You can bottom-fish there with a 'reverse ABC' pattern using this chart's 'b'as your point 'A' for the reversal.  _______ UPDATE (Apr 20, 6:41 p.m.): The correction never even got close to the secondary pivot at 1758.90, let alone the 'd' target $6 below it. This is bullish price action, and it projects most immediately to 1792.00. _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:20 p.m.): June Gold closed above the green line (1778.10), putting a midpoint resistance at 1880.10 in play (see inset) as  minimum upside objective for the near-to-intermediate -erm.

A month of trying has yet to push this brick above a 234.82 target that first hit our marquee months ago. This is notwithstanding recent hype from JP Morgan promising that bull-mania would soon shift back from growth to alleged 'value' for a significant period of time. This manifestly did not occur last week, but sometimes it can take a while for the chimps who manage your money to get on the same page.  Technically speaking, the pattern shown is too beautifully head-and-shoulders-y to ignore as a potential bearish signpost, but a crash would seem to be most unlikely, given the rosy outlook for other indexes tracked herein. We shall see, but for now IWM does not look like a scintillating bet. If you're keen to have a horse in the race anyway, I would encourage you to butterfly the July 16 175/180/185 puts for under 10 cents.  (They were being quoted on a bid/asked of -0.07/0.22.)  If you're not sure how to do this, watch the free video on butterfly spreads that's accessible via your account dashboard. _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 8:12 a.m. ET): Subscribers have responded enthusiastically to my trade suggestion, reporting a flutter of butterflies. Now, as always, cash out of half of them if they double in price -- and please let me know. _____ UPDATE (Apr 21, 5:24 p.m.): Subscribers went butterfly crazy today, netting some excellent specimens tied to the recommendation above. Check out the discussion in the chat room for details and ideas, including a strategy for legging into the 'fly for nothing. If you're in on the game, offer half of the spreads you acquired for twice what you paid, good till canceled.

Bitcoin mania hit an air pocket on Sunday with a so-far $11,500 plunge from last week's record-high $64,858. Groping for an explanation, Bloomberg and other mainstream sources attributed the drop to speculation that the U.S. Treasury might crack down on digital-money laundering. Yeah, sure. This tired story has been marking time for a decade, ever since the days when only a few hardcore gamers knew about blockchain money. Now it is being reheated and served up as a convenient explanation for bitcoin's nuttiness, much as stories about "tariff fears" and "vaccine hopes"' were trotted out each and every time mass psychosis seized traders. Crypto fans had better get used to the crackdown story. Recall that it took almost two years for the news media's tariff-war allegory to die a natural death. This occurred when the "war" itself became too convoluted for the supposed experts to explain. Eventually, and mercifully, they came to realize that they were only embarrassing themselves when they tried.  Now financial writers have trained their wellspring of ignorance on the latest tabloid story involving markets -- the epic mania in cryptocurrency. While this may be a welcome respite from sensationalist blather about how Reddit kids were crushing the hedge funds, it hardly serves to explain bitcoin's rabid swings. So let me try, even though the simple explanation is voodoo stuff that will never surface on Bloomberg or Jim Cramer's vaudeville show. 'Hidden Pivots' Rule! First understand there is no rational explanation for the day-to-day histrionics of deranged markets. The overarching mania is not hard to understand. It exists, and intensifies until climax, because speculators increasingly become convinced they can get rich quickly and with little actual work.  However, short-term whoops, dives and spasms can be explained and even predicted only by using charts.  Thus can we assume

Subscribers reported profiting from a 4103.25 rally target I'd drum-rolled here two weeks ago, when the futures were trading more than 100 points lower. Some of you were long part of the way up, while others got short at the target using a 'reverse rABC pattern' I'd put out earlier that evening. Because the futures topped at 4102.50, less than a point from my number, it was easy money -- as much as $900 per contract in mere hours.  We began Friday not knowing whether the top would hold, but like countless others since 2009, the bullish herd made quick work of it. This implies that the June contract is likely to reach a minimum 4200.44, the secondary pivot shown in the chart. Moreover, if this 'hidden' resistance, too, is crushed, we would need to shift our sights up to 4536.50. That's as high as the daily chart goes, and therefore a great place to attempt getting short with the usual ultra-tight stop-loss. Notice that the move through p=3864.38 was more of a drift than an impalement. That means I cannot quite guarantee that either of these Hidden Pivot objectives will be reached. However, the lower one at 4200 looks like about an 85% shot to get hit; and 4536, about 75%. Stay tuned to the chat room for guidance on getting short with risk extremely tightly controlled. As long-time subscribers may have noticed, we've had little trouble making money over the years by going against the crazed herd precisely at promising Hidden Pivot targets. (Recall that a 234.82 target in IWM target that caught the all-time high in mid-March within pennies has yet to be exceeded following a 27-point plunge amounting to almost 12%.) _______ UPDATE (Apr 13, 9:27 p.m.): While we're waiting for El Diablo to ascend to