Rick Ackerman

I was more eager to short this rabid weasel when it tiptoed to within an inch of the 3402.75 target last week. However, the subsequent dive-and-bounce histrionics seem too strenuous to produce a merely marginal higher high when index futures resume trading Sunday night. To get just a step ahead of hard technical evidence, my gut feeling is that the futures will blow past p with such force that we can confidently assume they are one their way to the 3486.00 target of the pattern shown. You can short 3402.75 nonetheless, but approach it as a day trade -- i.e., with a tight stop and expectations of just a small profit. This one may trigger Sunday evening, so night owls should be alert to that possibility when they return to their screens. _______ UPDATE (Aug 24, 6:27 p.m.):  After a stumble in the first hour, the futures powered their way to another impressive gain. They should be presumed headed most immediately to at least 3444.38, the 'secondary' Hidden Pivot of the pattern projecting to 3486.00. Be alert to a possible stall there and, provided you know how, an opportunity to get short using an 'rABC' setup on the lesser intraday charts. _______ UPDATE (Aug 25, 6:18 p.m.): The 3486.00 target has the potential to create a major top, and I'd suggest you get short there in some way or fashion, even if it means interpolating with puts in SPY. I will be traveling tomorrow and not in the trading room, but you should stay close to the room for crowdsourced ideas if you're interested in the trade.  The 3486.00 target has been drum-rolled for long enough to be mildly jinxed, but don't let that put you off. It deserves to be shorted come what may. If the futures blow past

Gold looks like a coin toss right now, with dueling impulse legs pointing in both directions. However, I'd bet on bulls to achieve the 2142.50 target eventually, even if the December contract corrects down to d=1837.10 first (see inset). The key, oddly enough, will be how quickly AAPL achieves its bull-market target at 537.23. They don't ring a bell at market tops, as the saying goes, but the 4-to-1 stock split in AAPL next Monday is for all intents and purposes the bell that will signal an end to the most dollar-consequential mania in stock-market history.  If the target does in fact prove to be the top in AAPL -- the 4-to-1 split price would be 134.30 -- gold could begin moving higher before the bottom drops out of shares. The most important caveat is the dollar, which is groping for a bottom and may have made one already. A strong dollar will put pressure on bullion, to be sure, but the effect would become muted over time due to rising perceptions that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Nothing could hasten that perception more than shifting odds of a Biden victory. This is an outcome that very obviously is NOT priced into the market, and I am predicting a Trump landslide myself. But even four more years of Trump offers no guarantees that the global economy will pull out of its pandemic-induced tailspin. The resulting writedowns of capital that are already in motion --  New York City, for one, and a dozen other large cities that taxpayers are fleeing -- represent a deflationary enormity almost beyond imagining. It is coming, though, and that's why the stock market must fall, with AAPL leading the way. It could take as long as four to six months for the

Silver's bullishness at the moment is less ambiguous than gold's. Specifically, a 'mechanical' buy that I recommended last week at 26.98 has yet to be stopped out after producing gains reported by numerous subscribers. Officially the position was closed out after I exited it myself with a profit and a note in the chat room. As far as I can tell, no one still holds any contracts. If the futures were to fall to the stop-loss and continue down to the green line (x=25.281), that would trigger a second 'mechanical' buy that would be moderately enticing.  We'll have to wait and see whether bulls can hang tough this week against a possible onslaught of FAANG-mania, but if they do, look for a push to the 30.385 target for starters. Alternatively, a bearish resolution could be expected to push the futures down to 22.755 (60-min, a= 29.440 on 8/10 at 7:00 p.m. ET). ______ UPDATE (Aug 25, 6:58 p.m.): Although silver got socked pretty hard for a few hours two weeks ago, bears have struggled ever since to finish the job. A week of trying has not pushed the September futures down to p=25.863, and if this doesn't happen by week's end bulls will be in good position to seize the upper hand Sunday night. Alternatively, a decisive breach of the midpoint pivot would put p2=24.209 in play, or even 22.755 (noted above) as a maximum downside target. ______ UPDATE (Aug 26, 9:35 p.m.): The legitimacy of the impulse leg in  this pattern  may be subtle, but it's good enough to raise the odds for winning 'mechanical' setups enroute to D=31.075.  This task can be crowd-sourced since chat room interest in Silver has been high.  Use p=28.585 as a minimum upside target for now. ______ UPDATE (Aug 27, 10:15 p.m.): Today's fevered

The 283.76 rally target shown in the chart has gotten billboard exposure on the home page for so long that it can hardly be expected to work. Even so, I'll recommend taking a small short position when QQQ gets there, buying the first close-to-expiring puts you can find trading for under $1.00. Do NOT go out farther in time so that the trade has more time to work; this is a losing strategy. If the trade works the way it's supposed to, you should see a nominal profit within 30-60 minutes of your entry. Since we are going against the most powerful rally in history and odds will therefore be against us, you should risk no more on this speculation than you can lose painlessly. The trade should be executed with QQQ no farther from the target than 0.03-0.06 points.  Stop yourself out if QQQ trades above 285.00 intraday. _______ UPDATE (Aug 24, 9:22 a.m. ET): Cancel the trade, since QQQ has gapped through the target ahead of this morning's opening. This is remarkable, considering how clear and compelling the resistance was. It attests to the demented strength of the rally. _______ UPDATE (Aug 25, 7:55 pm.): There is little point in proferring rally targets as potential tops, since even the most obstinate of them withstands the onslaught for no more than a day or two. QQQ has spent the last two days developing thrust for a push above a 286.28 target that came into play when 283.76 gave way. Now, assuming it falls as well, we'll be looking at a run-up to 292.41. It will become an odds-on bet if and when buyers push the Cubes above p=286.84.  Here's the chart. _______ UPDATE (Aug 26, 10:03 p.m.):  The 292.41 target flagged above caught the top of today's rampage within a

My skepticism toward last Monday's spiky run-up was vindicated when GDX sold off for the remainder of the week. Although punitive, the reversal did no serious technical damage to the intraday charts. However, the failure of buyers to push above a 44.18 'external' peak recorded on August 10 has shifted the burden of proof to bulls. If they cannot mobilize early in the week, look for GDX to continue falling to 39.30, or possibly 37.69 if any lower. Alternatively, the chart pattern could be resolved in bulls' favor with a two-day close above 43.35. That is a midpoint resistance and it is shown in this chart. It's tied to a 47.80 target. _______ UPDATE (Aug 25, 8:07 p.m. ET): A three-day, $2.47 plunge looks to have reversed today from a low 29 cents above the 39.30 target above.  You'll be on your own managing the risk if you bought near the bottom, but it will likely be with the wind at your back because of the well-time entry. _______ UPDATE (Aug 26, 10:14 p.m.): Several traders reported getting in near the low, so I am establishing a tracking position of 400 shares @ 39.70. Use a 40.76 stop-loss today, o-c-o with a closing offer on 200 shares at 42.03. ______ UPDATE (Aug 27, 10:33 p.m.): The tracking position produced a $678 gain on an extremely wild day.  Half was exited in the opening minutes at 42.34, where  GDX opened, and the rest was stopped out for an additional gain of $212.  We held no position at the close, nor do I suggest jumping in again at this time.

We've been using a 285.16 price objective for months, but it is not even a 'D' target, just the secondary pivot of an unambitious pattern that projects to 297.18. It has been a long slog -- one not particularly well suited to naked-call strategies. A perfectly timed bet on Aug 28 280 calls would have made you a few bucks, but not much more. As always, the key was to have taken off half of the position after the options doubled in price early on.  The ride to 285.16 from here is a no-brainer, and DIA could eventually make it to 297.18, but I have no simple option strategies to recommend. Here's one that sounds harder to do than it is -- a call butterfly centered on the 295 strike:  Buy the Oct 2 295/300/305 'fly for around 0.20. This implies shorting two 300 calls and buying a 295 call and a 305 call for a net debit of 20 cents ($20). The most you can lose is $20 per spread, but if the stock is trading near 300 at expiration, you could make as much as $500 per spread (although $260-$320 would be more realistic).  Work out the value of the options in this position with DIA trading at various prices between 250 and 350 if you want to understand exactly how butterfly spreads work. You could also do a 'rolling'  calendar spread, buying Oct 16 300 calls for 1.25 while shorting Sep 4 300 calls against them for 0.10. When the latter expire, you would short Sep 11 calls; then, the next Friday, Sep 18 calls. If DIA continues to move higher, the premium you would take in for each successive short sale would continue to increase. Ideally, DIA would be trading for around 300 on Oct 16,

The E-Mini S&Ps ended the week a millimeter shy of a well-advertised rally target at 3402.75, poised to achieve it when index futures start trading again Sunday evening. If we were so confident the target would be reached, why, you might ask, didn't we simply buy a dozen contracts weeks ago and avert our eyes as the futures made their way toward an all-but-inevitable rendezvous with 3402.75? The chart shows why such a strategy -- why nearly ALL buy-and-hold strategies -- are so diabolically difficult to employ. For although there may have been little doubt about whether 3402.75 would be reached, simply holding a few contracts for an "easy" ride would have subjected a trader to enormous strain, waves of excruciating doubt and many sleepless nights. Notice how the E-Minis' incremental gains from one green peak to the next were punctuated by losses several times as large with each downdraft to a red-numbered low. That is Mr Market's way of denying easy money to traders and investors who see "obvious" trends, and who think the path to riches entails simply sticking with those trends no matter what. It turns out that the 'no matter what' aspect of trading the big swings can be so harrowing that few of us have the balls or the discipline to ride out the inevitable wailing. shrieking days and nights. How to Die Rich We've all heard stories about some commodity trader who made a killing riding a monster move all the way to the top. A cursory look at the chart would seem to suggest this was easy -- just up, up, up and aw-a-a-y, like AAPL and TSLA have been doing lately. On closer inspection, however, the steep uptrend is revealed to be a deception: the magnifying lens reveals how even parabolic rallies

I've been a hard-core deflationist and dollar bull for decades, and so I've been eager to see technical evidence that the dollar's wrenching correction since March is at an end.  Alas, although there are faint stirrings in the greenback that hint of a short-to-intermediate-term rally, I doubt that it heralds the resumption of the dollar's long-term bull market. My expectation is that this will occur in conjunction with a deflationary implosion that will usher in a global economic depression. For the time being, though, the money spigot is wide open, fiscal stimulus is at unprecedented levels and few are worried about a ruinous debt deflation.  It is inevitable nonetheless because too many dollars are owed -- including more than a quadrillion of them tied to financial derivatives -- for debtors to slip the noose. The sum is vastly more than the piddling trillions being loaned or gifted to the financially strapped. And although no one thinks they or even the taxpayers will have to repay this money -- meaning it is ultimately inflationary, at least in theory -- the deflationary black hole created by a collapsing derivatives market and falling prices for energy and real estate will suck all debt into the void of singularity. Stochastic Blahhhs Concerning the Dollar Index, its last few, minor rallies have exceeded prior peaks on the intraday charts, and this is bullish. However, stochastic indicators do not suggest that a major reversal is at hand. Notice in the chart (inset) that DXY's descending lows since March have generated correspondingly descending lows in the weekly stochastic. Although this 'non-divergence' is not bearish per se, it is not the kind of chart action we should expect at a major low.  In contrast, notice how just before the dollar took off at the beginning of 2018, we

AAPL remains in thrall to madmen, mountebanks and child molesters, although this determined crew could run out of room to manipulate the stock moonward very shortly. The Cupertino firm's shares rose $10 on Thursday, settling at 472.83 and adding a total of $40 billion of 'wealth' to the net worth of Switzerland and, probably, every homeowner within three blocks of Malibu beach. From here it's no more than a three-day climb to 490.97, a potentially important rally target that Rick's Picks subscribers have been using to suspend disbelief as Apple's valuation climbed toward, and now above, the $2 trillion mark. Analysts say the manufacturer's smartphones and computers are selling well, but of course they'd have to be selling very well indeed for the firm to rack up the highest valuation of any company in the history of the world. Looking ahead to the inevitable, there's a limit to how high AAPL can go, and this will necessarily place a limit on how high the stock market itself can go. The Dow Industrials gained a paltry 47 points on Thursday, a divergence in relation to the lunatic stocks -- AMZN, CMG, FB, GOOG, MSFT and NFLX -- that will grow increasingly worrisome if it persists.  No one seems to have noticed it yet, but if and when they do, investors' damn-the-torpedoes attitude is certain to prove far more fragile than it now appears.