Rick Ackerman

The technological wizardry that has given us smart phones, desktop computers, electric cars and flat-screen TVs has masked a pernicious decline in America’s standard of living since the 1950s. One area where this is painfully obvious is the deterioration of customer service. Recall the scene in Back to the Future when a car pulls into a filling station and three attendants jump up to pamper it. One checks under the hood, another makes sure the tires are properly inflated and a third pumps 28-cent gas.  Director Spielberg intended this as a wry comment on how much companies valued their customers back then, and how hard they worked to keep us happy. These days, most companies care so little about us that they have cut off access to phone support, even for the most serious problems. The Death of Support A friend recently spent more than fifty hours trying to clear up a billing problem with Amazon. She could not access her account, and each time they reset it she would find herself locked out again the next morning. Although Amazon offers limited phone support, in this case it was useless because the problem was deemed “technical” and unrelated to a merchandise screw-up. It took literally hundreds of phone calls to get nowhere, and every call was impeded by the familiar gauntlet of voice menus. Even with a case number, it took 20 minutes to reach a supervisor. At least a dozen of these guys interceded along the way, creating a daisy chain of broken promises and meaningless apologies. Where abusing customers is concerned, Facebook is in a class by itself, so inscrutable, opaque and coldly uncaring that one might think they’d outsourced call support to North Korea. I was spending as much as $5,000 a month with them on advertising;

The chart, with a 234.82 target that was missed by a fraction of a millimeter, is starting to look familiar, but it shows the last clear bull-market target that can be extrapolated from monthly bars. Moreover, the ABC coordinates of the bull-market pattern are anchored in bedrock, tied respectively to the bear market low in 2009, then the high and low of the pandemic crash. I advised getting short via call options in TZA, an inverse 3x bear ETF, and the 15% rally that has occurred since, from 29.54 to 34.09, could have been used to take a healthy partial profit.  Set a 30.08 stop-loss for what remains, but you can raise it to break-even levels if you have yet to exit any shares or calls. _______ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:20 p.m. EDT): The possibility that a major top is in remains a decent bet, given that the plunge from within a hair of the 234.82 target I'd drum-rolled earlier is now at nearly 10%.  If a reversal is coming, it is likely to come from around 206, a number based on a gut feeling I have rather than on an ABCD pattern.

Sellers turned timid as the week ended, but they still had bulls mildly on the run. With just a little more weakness ES would trip a bland 'mechanical' buy at p=3890.63, stop 3830.50, but I'd suggest passing it up for a less risky play at x=3800.56. If the futures appear reluctant to come all the way down to meet our niggardly bid, we can always attempt another way in. My gut feeling is that the current pullback will stop out a long initiated at the red line, but that the futures will have the potential in any event to reach the 4070.75 target. It is equivalent to one at 4083.75 that we'd been using for the March contract. _______ UPDATE (Mar 23, 6:04 p.m. ET): Sellers have been too timid to do more than limp through the day, and sell-offs lasting more than two days have been extremely rare. If  recent weakness is about to intensify, it would be telegraphed by an easy penetration of the 3846.50 Hidden Pivot support shown in this chart. That's my minimum downside objective for the moment. ________ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:29 p.m.): The futures will have a chance to turn from 3860.75, a Hidden Pivot support that can be bottom-fished with a stop-loss as tight as 3859.75, or with a tight rABC pattern. Notice in the chart that today's rally to the green line tripped a textbook 'mechanical' short tied to D=3860.75. _____ UPDATE (Mar 25, 6:01 p.m.): The first trade suggested above would have produced a quick $50 loss, but trying again at the lower number, 3846.50, would have gotten you aboard 3.25 points from the low of a 63-point rally worth up to $3100 per contract. Bears were on the ropes at the close, but this short squeeze would need to touch 3951

DIA shredded its way past a major Hidden Pivot resistance at 327.40 that came from the weekly chart, implying that still-higher prices are coming. The overshoot was just five points, or about 1.6%, but that's enough to presume that the next downswing, unless it exceeds 298.59 (!), will be merely corrective. Thereafter, we should expect any subsequent upthrust to achieve a minimum 343.38, equivalent to a 1700-point rally in the Dow Industrials.  For trading purposes, use a pullback to p2=319.81, the secondary pivot, to get 'mechanically' long, stop 311.95.  If you employ call options, I'd recommended targeting 343.38 with a four-week (or so) call butterfly. _______ UPDATE (Mar 23, 6:09 p.m. ET): Lower the bid to 296.24, stop 280.52, for now. Just a gut feeling that we needn't rush to buy. _______ UPDATE (Mar 25, 6:45): I doubt that today's surge is going anywhere, but if it exceeds the red line at 327.98 shown in this chart, I'd have to reconsider, since that would put a 335.04 target in play.

After topping a micron above a longstanding bull-market target at 337.10, the Cubes have come down hard. They would have tripped a 'mechanical' buy if the selloff had hit x=294.75, but it was not to be. Instead, a weak rally from just above this benchmark pushed the trade out of range. Perhaps this was for the better, since the subsequent rally has so far failed to achieve the p=329.40 midpoint pivot where we might have taken a partial profit.  The 'mechanical' buy would still trigger if QQQ relapses to the green line, but I am not enthusiastic enough to recommend a straight limit-bid there. We can use the theoretical 'buy' signal nonetheless to set up a less risky entry, but there's no hurry to settle on a plan until such time as x=294.75 is approached (or perhaps exceeded).

With mincing steps, April Gold has climbed modestly over the last two weeks and looked poised for something more decisive. But up or down?  My bias is bearish, implying a fall to the 1630.50 target shown (see inset). The reason for my dour outlook is that the futures have failed to surpass visually distinctive peaks on the last two rallies.  That's nothing that an uncorrected pop on Monday or Tuesday above 1768.50 wouldn't remedy, but even then a further push exceeding the 1772.90 target shown here would be needed to cushion bulls against the inevitable next bear raid. ______ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:38 p.m.): A feeble rally has failed to exceed even a single prior peak on the hourly chart over the last two days.  Gold looks so punk, in fact, that it is probably about to feint higher to get our attention. That's okay, but let's stipulate that the rally exceed the 1754.20 peak recorded on March 18 before we take it half-seriously. _____ UPDATE (Mar 25, 6:51 p.m.): A gratuitous, $20 spike died quickly, sending gold down to a loss on the day. _______ UPDATE (Mar 26, 10:23 p.m.): Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

May Silver is on a 'mechanical' buy signal triggered on March 4, but it has been in no hurry to reach the red line, a midpoint pivot where partial profit-taking would be in order. Although I did not recommend the trade because of its implied $15,000 entry risk, I left the door open to jumping aboard above the 'official' entry price using a pattern of lesser degree. So far, nothing appealing has come along. The only reason silver looks more bullish than gold on the chart is because of the three-day skew caused by Reddit/Robinhoodies when they briefly attempted to short-squeeze the futures. Their foolishness brought short-lived exhilaration, but we shouldn't expect them to try it again any time soon. ______ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:46 p.m.) May Silver has returned to the green line, tripping a second 'mechanical' buy tied to the 34.55 target given here earlier.  I don't trust it, but we can still attempt to get long somewhat lower using a 'reverse ABC' pattern like the one shown in this chart. [Note: The 'D' target has been corrected Thursday morning to 23.24.]   If you're interested, stay tuned to the chat room for possible guidance in real-time.

I've avoided the pandemic, politics and economic doomsday as topics recently because there's only so much one can say about them. This is especially true of the coming bear market.  Coming exactly when, you might ask? Of course, even the very best of us gurus is unlikely to produce the correct answer, other than in after-the-fact promotional material that shamelessly bends the truth.  My own technical work suggests the market may already have topped, since most of the major indexes have stalled within inches of Hidden Pivot targets I'd drum-rolled weeks or even months earlier. IWM, for one, has yet to surpass the 234.82 objective disseminated to subscribers six weeks ago.  A proxy for small-cap stocks, it peaked at 234.53 on March 15 and has sold off moderately since.  Similarly, a QQQ target at 337.10 that first appeared here five weeks ago caught the peak of a spike on February 16 that hit 338.19. And there was a well-advertised, very long-term DIA target at 327.27 that has been exceeded only slightly so far. Rotate This, Mack! Ordinarily I'd be pretty jazzed about all of these possible tops occurring more or less simultaneously and within easy distance of compelling Hidden Pivot targets.  I tend to rely solely on my charts rather than on my gut in order to be reasonably certain about market trends and turning points; but in this instance I am drawn to more subjective evidence. Specifically, the machine-like rotation of buying from one sector to the next that has been occurring routinely is evidence that the crooks who make their living at it are still very much in control of the game. Thus whenever stocks are falling, we can safely infer it is because the crooks are keen to accumulate them at lower prices. Rotation also provides an

VXX has crushed every downside target I've flagged. Does that tell you something? The next good opportunity to lose your money will come at 10.91, but at least focusing on this number can help prevent addicts from picking bottoms all the way down. Here's the chart.