Rick Ackerman

With business headlines in a Q2 earnings wallow, the bullish trajectory of stocks has barely slowed. Notice in the accompanying chart that after stalling at the midpoint resistance for a mere day, the S&Ps have crashed through it and now appear headed with irresistible force toward its 'D' sibling at 1703.75. That implies a mere 120-point Dow rally, but my hunch is that the target will not put up much of a fight. Sunday night owls may be the only traders able to catch a ride, since it could well be over -- at least temporarily -- on whatever gap-up opening DaBoyz are able to engineer Monday morning. _______ UPDATE (July 22, 5:23 p.m. EDT): The futures spent the day screwing the pooch, which is about as bad as it ever gets these days for the broad averages when the news is bad or worse.  The 1703.75 target noted above remains viable nonetheless, and the E-Mini therefore remains bullish from a trading perspective. Camouflageurs should look for opportunities on the 5-minte chart or lower.

Let me reiterate this:  If lousy Q2 earnings recently announced by some of America's biggest companies have barely slowed the bullish rampage on Wall Street, then we should prepare for an even more manic rally into autumn. For starters, and irrespective of dismal quarterly reports currently dominating the financial headlines, check out my target for the E-Mini S&Ps in today's touts.  It is a cinch to be reached, but it will be interesting to see whether it is subsequently pulverized. That would confirm my suspicion that much higher prices impend. My longstanding DJIA target at 16800 remains viable as a minimum upside objective, but we shouldn't presume that even a Hidden Pivot resistance of major degree will long resist the bullish tide.

Google is getting pounded Thursday night, demonstrating yet again that the market's supposedly perfect knowledge is more art than science. The good news for us is that, since we 'know' the stock will eventually hit $1000, the current shakedown could provide an opportunity to leg into some riskless bull spreads well above these levels.  We'll be shooting for the September 960-980-1000 butterfly for 'even' or better, first by buying the 960-980 call spread in a 1:2 ratio for a $6 credit. This will require buying the 960s at a corrective low, so stay tuned to the chat room if you want to be on top of any opportunities that develop in real time. I'll open an impromptu session Friday morning to provide a more detailed explanation of our strategy, but my goal is to simplify the actual execution steps sufficiently to allow even novices to participate. _______ UPDATE (10:03 a.m. EDT): Here's the ticket: Buy four Sep 960-Sep 980 call spreads if GOOG relapses to 861.39 as I expect.  That is the p midpoint support of a pattern that incorporates the actual overnight low, 858.80, as the point 'b' of (15-min) a=910.89 at 7/18 at 4:00 p.m.; b=858.80; c=887.43.  I've refreshed the chart to show all of this.  Since GOOG could fall all the way to 835.34 if p fails, let's use a 20-cent stop-loss on the spread, based on a 'reasonable' acquisition price actually reported in the chat room. You should initiate the spread-trade with GOOG within 15 cents of the target, paying midway between bid/asked.  With GOOG currently at 880.00, the spread is trading for around 1.75. However, it'll get cheaper if the stock falls to p. _______ FURTHER UPDATE (11:07 a.m. EDT): A chat-roomer has convinced me to try something easier: legging into the Sep 960-980 call

With Big Blue's bad earnings news out of the way, DaBoyz are wasting no time getting back to business-as-usual. The bull trap they sprang on yesterday's gap-up opening may seem counterintuitive, but it'll set the stage for more accumulation in the weeks ahead as dismal earnings headlines run their course. Meanwhile, the stock ended the day on a buy signal, but Hidden Pivots may prove less useful than the trendline (see inset) in determining how much more mileage is left for this short-squeeze spurt.

IBM is the latest company to weigh in with rotten earnings that Wall Street has blithely shrugged off.  If the Dow can muster a 78-point waft on a bad day, just imagine what it'll do when the sobering realities of Q2 have blown over.  Companies have already warned that Q3 could be even worse, so 'investors' should have a field day buying the rumor ahead of October's worsening news.

With bullion prices on the upswing and a possible end to the bear market that has ravaged mining shares for nearly two years, it’s a good time to look at a pair of junior exploration companies whose properties we recently visited. The companies are Rye Patch Gold [RPMGF: OTC], with holdings totaling 65 square miles along the Oreana and Cortez trends in Nevada; and California Gold Mining Inc. [CGM: CN] , which owns the 3351-acre Fremont Property in Mariposa, at the southern tip of the Motherlode just outside the border of Yosemite National Park . Like most small exploration companies, their respective stocks are trading at bargain-basement levels that beggar belief.  We would have no qualms about recommending either stock to family or friends. The caveat, however, is that neither stock is likely to move significantly higher if bullion quotes remain in a funk or fall. First, Rye Patch. A visitor to sites the company has leased near Elko and Winnemucca is certain to be awed by their panoramic grandeur. With a sweep of the hand, CEO Bill Howald traces out a broad vista of hills and valleys outside of Elko that contain gold and silver ore that is Rye Patch’s for the taking. With so much land under the firm’s operational control, much of it contiguous with promising stakes held and mined by much bigger companies, it’s truly astounding, but also depressing, that one can buy a share of Rye Patch these days for just 17 cents. That price could just as easily go to $2 a share or more if investors were to return enthusiastically to the idea that gold itself is precious. Alas, and for now at least, bullion mania seems a distant prospect. As such, our enthusiasm for the two companies is based on our strong

August Gold's dive yesterday left a bullish target at 1327.00 intact, but it also did some technical damage on the hourly chart by creating a bearish impulse leg. Check out the update and new chart to see where we would need to reef the sails.

The thing to notice about the U.S. dollar right now is that there is not much to notice (see inset). It would be accurate to say that it has gone nowhere in more than eight years, notwithstanding some whipsaws in either direction. More recently -- meaning the last four years -- it has been mostly treading water and currently sits around the middle of the range.  That is not to say it couldn't break out of the range on the next big move; however, whatever is coming, there is nothing in the charts that suggests a dollar cataclysm. I mention this only because it has always been a given that when the financial system collapses -- as it eventually must, due to the yet-to-be-actualized implosionary force of a quadrillion dollar derivatives edifice -- the greenback will be in the thick of it at ground zero. The central banks may be able to control interest rates and other variables in the financial system, but there are far too many dollars to control if market forces should take hold someday, impelled by the epiphany of America's bankruptcy.

Tedium on Wall Street provided an excellent backdrop for some finely nuanced reasoning and a couple of ‘Aha!’ moments during this session. Disciplined thinking is essential to the process of turning one’s Hidden Pivot knowledge into street smarts, and that is why we should take pains to think through every trade thoroughly, even trades that have not worked. Pay particularly close attention to the reasoning behind a scalp-trade we considered in Google, since it contains some useful ideas for making money on even the most trendless days.