Rick Ackerman

Wednesday's punk performance suggests bulls are ready for rest.  Even the obligatory short-squeeze dog-and-pony show on the opening failed to lift the futures to a modest midpoint pivot at 3164.88. A pop above it, however unlikely, would put the 3266.75 target shown in play. Otherwise, expect a breach of C=3063.00, then, probably, a weak rally after bulls have been stopped out.  It could provide an enticing opportunity to get short, so tune to the Trading Room discussion if you want to participate.

The 336.22 target I sent out Sunday night nailed the start of AAPL's maniacal, $12 bounce on Monday within 36 cents, telegraphing the correspondingly wild-eyed bounce that occurred in the Nasdaq 100 and the broad averages. It also caught the exact low of the gap-down, opening-bar plunge orchestrated by the stock's inventively sleazy handlers. Let me repeat this for the benefit of new subscribers: Get AAPL exactly right and you won't have to guess about exactly where the stock market is headed.  The pattern shown suggests that Apple shares are all but certain to hit the 370.19 target. When they do, this important Hidden Pivot is so clear and compelling that it is bound to be short-able.  Look for the pivot to act like granite the first time the lunatic brigade encounters it. I haven't made the target publicly viewable, nor should you tell your friends about it. Your trading bias should stay bullish until it is reached, since 370.19 is also our minimum upside objective. If you've made $2000 or more when we get there, short the bejeezus out of 'D' with a stop-loss that risks half of it. ______ UPDATE (Jun 17, 9:06 p.m. EDT):  Careful! The 370.19 target may have to wait, since AAPL's handlers appear to be distributing stock ahead of a shakedown. Its purpose would be to steal stock from widows and pensioners at relative fire-sale prices. If the move creates any special opportunities while I'm in the trading room, I will let you know.

A gap-down opening Sunday night that was intended to exhaust sellers has left a crucial midpoint support at 2964 untouched. If it is decisively penetrated, that would put the 2851.50 target theoretically in play and also set up a 'mechanical' short on a rally back up to the green line.  Although the opening bar necessarily achieved its purpose, the shallow bounce so far suggests that a second wave of selling is coming. Any further analysis will have to wait until liquidity shows up at the opening bell. _______ UPDATE (June 15, 8:22 p.m. EDT): Some subscribers got in front of a speeding projectile today, shorting at the green line without a game plan. Check out my posts in the Trading Room between 12:19 and 12:56 for some helpful hints. I put out a wide range of recommendations suited to all levels of experience, but the ones intended for relative novices or those unfamiliar with the Hidden Pivot Method usually contain explicitly detailed instructions. In general, if the instructions do not tell you everything you (personally) need to know to do the trade, you should pass it up. There will always be another opportunity.  If a trade recommendation lacks such details, it is not an oversight; rather, it is because tactical clarity was not possible at the time the guidance was formulated. ______UPDATE (June 16, 10:27 p.m.) The rally stalled almost precisely at the 3158.25 midpoint pivot shown here. Given my bullish outlook for AAPL, however, we can expect buyers to surpass the resistance and climb to at least p2=3275.50, if not necessarily to D=3392.75.

Friday's afternoon's histrionics triggered a 'mechanical' short at 9721.50 that has left a 9338.25 target in play well below these levels. (Please note that the equivalent target for the September contract is 9327.50.] Although the futures got socked on the opening bar Sunday night, this was just the usual sleazy ploy to exhaust sellers, the better to run NQ back up their old wazoo.  If they return in droves for a second wave of selling before dawn, however, DaBoyz may need to take this vehicle down to the D target flagged above to set-up the next short-squeeze.  None of this will have much bearing on the very bullish target at 10571 billboarded here earlier.

Investment manias are nothing new on Wall Street, but this time the heavy betting is on the mania itself.  Speculating on volatility is the latest fad, and it is metastasizing so quickly that in just two short months wagers that the stock market will grow even crazier have become the actual cause of its craziness.  The bets mainly involve  derivatives, including options and ETFs that are tied to trillions of dollars worth of stock. Big guys, little guys and everyone in-between are supposedly immersed in this tail-risk crapshoot, and it is causing markets to spasm wildly not for bullish or bearish reasons, but rather, as implied above, because of the volatility bets themselves. Tail-risk mania’s fuse was lit in in January, when some canny institutional traders loaded up on then-cheap insurance against a market crash. This speculation proved to be timely, but it was more than just luck. They had access to good information that wasn’t available to most investors at the time. While some caught a faint whiff of Wuhan’s troubles back then, the stories were buried on inside pages, and few would have suspected that the threat of a pandemic would soon engulf the planet. The money managers, along with some muckety-mucks on Capitol Hill, were hearing the stories too, but with an urgent, well-informed emphasis on scary details that put the China crisis in play as a cheap speculation. A Covid-19 Epiphany The son of a friend saw it all coming in January because he got very sick himself after Chinese classmates returned to MIT following Christmas break. He nearly died, and the experience led him to warn his parents and grandfather to sell all of the stock in their portfolios. The hedge fund guys were on top of situations like this too, and its dire implications

Reporters and their editors have been getting whipped around by the stock market, since the market drives the news, not the other way around. That's why we were battered senseless with ridiculously optimistic headlines about the increasing likelihood of a v-shaped economic recovery. Although there is zero chance of this happening, the market's absurd rally for incomprehensible cyclical reasons  implied strongly otherwise. Lo, stocks fell hard for just one day on Thursday and the sunny stories on the front page vanished to make room for news about about a supposedly resurgent pandemic.  Recall that Wall Street had no trouble shrugging off this story when it surfaced statistically perhaps a week earlier; now the same story, with a few more deaths, inspires only fear. Every news outlet in the country that covers the stock market attributed Thursday's sharp drop to renewed Covid-19 fears. All of them were flat-out wrong. Stocks turned lower simply because the most important stock of all, Apple, hit an important Hidden Pivot rally target at 354.47 that had been disseminated to Rick's Picks subscribers a week earlier with the stock trading $30 lower. AAPL, the 800-pound gorilla of market bellwethers, was due for a downturn regardless of what the coronavirus was doing. The spin on news stories about deepening recession and the spread of Covid-19 will continue to reflect the stock market's cyclical ups and downs, which, more than the spread of the disease itself, determine the mood of headline writers and of America itself.

Bears had better not break out the bubbly yet, since Thursday's powerful selloff did not disturb the 10571 rally target first disseminated here two weeks ago. The key feature in the chart is the April 17 spike through the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot at 8600.00. Usually, when a clear midpoint resistance is so easily and decisively penetrated it means the D target with which it is associated is likely to be achieved. That doesn't mean the futures can't get pummeled all the way back down to p=8600 in the meantime, or even to x=7614, before they reverse and head for their fated rendezvous with 10,571. However, we would be 'mechanical' buyers at either level, based on the way buyers speared the midpoint pivot. Please note that the pattern shown in the chart, with A-B shifted downward to the 2016-2018 bull cycle, came within 0.7% of nailing the then-record high of 9763 achieved in mid-February. This suggests the pattern is a good one for predicting key turning points. ______ UPDATE (Jun 15, 8:35 p.m.): Short-covering psychotics are back in the driver's seat, headed most immediately to the 10341 target shown. Consider it a lock-up if the futures pop through p=9854 decisively or close above it for two consecutive days.  As for the bigger-picture target at 10571, as recent touts made clear there was never a reason to doubt it would be reached, least of all when stocks were freefalling last week. ______ UPDATE (Jun 17, 9:31 p.m.): With AAPL and the E-Mini S&Ps mildly in retreat Thursday night, and this vehicle unable to muster a push to an unchallenging 'secondary pivot' at 10,098, we should expect sellers to dominate into week's end. A moderate rally on the opening bell should be shorted, since it would imply DaBoyz are getting

The 354.47 rally target sent out last week ahead of a powerful rally enabled subscribers to get short just 30 cents from the top of Thursday's hellish plunge. Several of you reported using put options, but I will track the remainder of the position using stock. Profit taking intervals advised in the chat room were at 348.50 and 340.41, leaving a hundred shares short with an effective cost basis of  380.47. The implied gain on paper works out to $4457 at a current price of 335.90.  For now, use a stop-loss of 351.07, but check back toward the end of the day for a possible update ahead of the weekend. _______ UPDATE (June 14, 10:20 p.m.): My immediate downside target is 332.22 (30-min, a=351.06 on 6/11). Bid 332.70 to cover the remaining 100 shares (or last 25% of the of the original position), but also bring the stop-loss down to  342.74 if  AAPL trades below 336.22.

Sellers left stocks hanging on for dear life at the close, implying the market is unlikely to come roaring back to end the week. A few more days of punishment could lie ahead, but how much more of it are we likely to see. The chart shows two Fibonacci levels that would equate to pullbacks of, respectively, 61.8% and 78.6%, measured against the powerful rally begun from 2760 on May 14. The corresponding levels are 2940, which lies 86 points below; and 2861, which would imply a 166-point plunge. I doubt that this correction -- and that's what I think it is -- will exceed the May 14 bottom, but if sellers crush a couple more external lows on Friday (i.e., 2992 and 2903), we may need to reconsider.