Rick Ackerman

I've put DIA back on the touts list in case it triggers a 'mechanical' buy signal that subscribers, particularly newcomers to Rick's Picks, could use to get long. Although I prefer to trade the underlying shares rather than options when using this kind of entry set-up, because this vehicle is pricey we can use calls instead.  Ideally, the signal would come on a sharp pullback from around 253, but we may see other opportunities intraday. You'll need to be tuned to the Trading Room if they materialize too quickly for a tout update that would generate an email notification. To receive these timely messages, check the 'Get Touts'  box in the Profile section of your account Dashboard. Looking just ahead, there is upside potential to as high as 267.28 if buyers can push decisively past p=247.79 or close above it for two consecutive days. ______ UPDATE (May 24, 3:40 p.m.): DIA spent the entire week screwing the pooch, winding up almost exactly where it was a week earlier on a gap-up opening that is still being digested.  Any decent entry opportunities that arise will come intraday, so stay tuned -- either by checking the Trading Room for timely discussion or enabling update notifications in your account dashboard. _______ UPDATE (May 26, 9:25 p.m.): A pullback to the green line (238.05) would trigger a 'mechanical' buy, but we'll take a pass, since the point B high of the pattern is 100% pork sausage. Another problem is that DIA did not follow the S&Ps lower at the end of the day, adding to our consternation. The gap up through p=247.79 is bullish nonetheless and implies DIA will reach the 267.28 target with little trouble._______ UPDATE (May 27, 9:37 p.m.): No change. DIA still looks like a lead-pipe cinch to reach 267.28, although

We are trading with an ambitious rally target at 3153.25, but first things first. The immediate objective is the 3008.00 Hidden Pivot shown in the chart. Given the way Monday's stampede crushed the midpoint resistance, and barring some world-shaking development overnight, the target is all but certain to be reached. Be alert, however, to the possibility that the rally could stall at 2991.25. But if 3008.00 is exceeded decisively intraday, the next significant peak en route to 3153.25 would be at 3074.00. These last numbers are all to be found in this pattern, which is smaller than the ones referenced above but more immediate. It's a lot to keep track of, but to summarize, the sequence of resistances is: 2991.15...3008.00...3032.75....3074.00....3153.25. Any upthrust decisively exceeding one will put the next in play. The HP levels in both charts can be used to create 'mechanical' setups, probably the easiest way to trade this rally. ______ UPDATE (May 21, 8:49 p.m. EDT): The futures have made no headway toward the lowest of my targets, 2991.15, but bears haven't shown much moxie either. I expect the week to end with a whimper as the nation heads into a three-day holiday weekend, but if sellers turn churlish, here's a chart to stay a step ahead of them.

On Monday, with the Dow Industrials up nearly a thousand points on news that a Boston-based company, Moderna, has a promising vaccine, I warned that U.S. equity markets were about to start trading like a drug stock in trials. Lo,  on day two, we've already got our first inkling of how damaging even mildly disappointing news can be to asset values when Wall Street is stoked on vaccine hubris. Moderna fell hard, taking the entire stock market with it, after a reporter at the web site statnews.com expressed skepticism over the quality of the company's PR releases. "While Moderna blitzed the media," noted Newstat's Helen Branswell,  "it revealed very little information — and most of what it did disclose were words, not data. That’s important: If you ask scientists to read a journal article, they will scour data tables, not corporate statements. With science, numbers speak much louder than words." So there you have it: Hedge-fund buyers of shares trampled each other on Monday because of mere words. Maybe next time they'll be more careful.  We had better get used to this kind of craziness, because it's going to make investors' tariff-war angst last year look like a game of tiddlywinks.  And who, you ask, is Helen Branswell?  A day ago few of us had ever heard of her. On Tuesday, though, she was the most influential reporter on the planet, causing shares, ETFs and stock indexes everywhere to shed tens of billion of dollars worth of value in mere hours. Now THAT's power!  The thing is, now there will be a hundred Helen Branswell wannabes out there in the blog world eager to take on the biggest story of the century. Will investors be able to live with incontinence for the next three months as, predictably, vaccine stories continue

The chart show the pattern I would suggest using if you want to trade ES right now, or at least avoid getting on the wrong side of it. This isn't rocket science, and you need to put aside the intimidating fact that the ups and downs comprise the biggest market swings, measured in points, that have ever occurred. They are no different, as far as we should be concerned, from the patterns we would use on the 5-minute chart to trade and forecast. Note that the D rally target still leaves room on the bearish chart displayed here yesterday to allow a 200 point rally and still be bearish. I went with the bearish pattern first because I did not imagine a rally would occur so soon that would be big enough to tip me bullish. The reason I am so confident in this chart is that its point B high is legitimate, meaning it is not 'sausage', having slightly exceeded an 'external' peak well to the left. I am making no effort to comprehend the silliness of what is going on here, other than in purely technical terms. You should get it out of your heads that what is happening on the charts needs to be tied to economic reality. I am not thinking about reality, just reading the stupid chart. It says what it says, and I you needn't seek answers beyond it to make money and/or preserve capital, our main objectives. We can trade the bejeezus out of it using the same tactics we would on the five-minute chart. At the moment, the best way to cut risk down to size is by using the lesser charts to create set-ups at turning points on bigger charts. Here's a note to ourselves for later (shades of Unk!): If

Who could have imagined that the entire universe of U.S. stocks would someday trade like the shares of a small pharmaceutical company with a supposed miracle cure for cancer in the works? That, evidently, is what Wall Street has become: a drug-stock crap-shoot-on-steroids. The Dow Industrials shot up more than a thousand points Monday on word that a vaccine from Moderna was showing promise in initial tests on humans. To understand how far the Cambridge MA-based firm is from defeating Covid-19, consider what Bloomberg news had to say: "The vaccine trials are being conducted in stages, with the first test designed only to look at safety and whether or not the shot created lab markers of an immune-system response. Only in later stages of testing, to be conducted in thousands of patients starting in July, will the vaccine go up against the virus in the real world in a definitive test of whether it prevents or lessens infections." What Could Disappoint? Ah, the real world!  What could possibly go wrong between now and July to disappoint investors? For starters, the drug could prove to be a total bust. That would not be unusual in the annals of drug testing. In fact, it is far more unusual when such disappointments do not happen. Considering speculators' rabid exuberance on Monday for what is at best a longshot bet, disappointment in this case could cause shares to shed ten trillion dollars of value in day or two, in a global cascade that would make the 1929 Crash seem like a burp. To repeat: Big disappointment are the norm, not the exception, in the world of experimental drugs. Moderna's efforts are inspiring boundless overconfidence simply because speculators are conflating the urgency of finding a cure with the likelihood of succeeding at it. It is

Although the spread of Covid-19 has gripped the world with fear, there has been precious little discussion of the one thing that could stop the disease in its tracks: our natural immune systems. Although we habitually seek cures in the form of vaccines and other drugs, our bodies are capable of outperforming them with little risk to our health. This fact is well known to those who have explored cancer remedies, only to discover that even the most renowned treatment centers still employ primarily "slash-poison-and-burn" methods that have not changed much over the last 50 years. Nor could any of these tactics be said to have beaten the disease.  While surgery, chemotherapy and radiation can sometimes prolong the lives of those afflicted with cancer, they are hardly a cure. Far from it. The toxic combination of radiation and chemotherapy, for one, can have a devastating impact on the quality of one's life by destroying vital organs, blood vessels and nerve pathways, along with T-cells and the body's ability to regenerate healthy tissue. Is there a better way? Fortunately, yes. In the case of Covid-19, rather than waiting indefinitely for a miracle vaccine to come along,  here are ten steps you can take immediately to help protect yourself. This indispensable list comes from two good friends who live in Boulder, Dr. Joel Rauch and Alexia Parks. Alexia is a world-changing dynamo and one of the most remarkable women I've ever met. Joel is a retired physician, Baylor trained, who specialized in bone-marrow transplants. He has become Boulder's go-to guy for world-class triathletes, bicyclists and rock-climbers seeking a nutritional edge. Their Ten Steps spells out simple things anyone can do to help fortify the immune system against the coronavirus and other diseases.  If the plan engages you, please send a copy of

DIA's chart is more clearly bearish than the one currently featured in conjunction with the E-Mini S&P tout. The former looked undeniably bullish at April 17's 242.66 peak, since the impulse leg that created the point 'B' high had exceeded the required internal and external peaks. The B-C leg stalled at 247.67, slightly above at p=247.15, validating the pattern. But consider what happened next: Two waves down this month ultimately breached the point 'C' low, negating the bullish pattern. So why not simply draw a new bullish pattern using 247.67 as 'B' and last week's low at 228.30 as 'C'? Answer: because the 247.67 high failed to 'refresh' the bullish energy of the daily chart by exceeding an 'external' peak -- in this case 250.54 -- as we require. This may sound esoteric to those unfamiliar with the finer points of Hidden Pivot analysis, but the bottom line is that it allows a much clearer, bearish interpretation than is possible with the E-Mini S&Ps. There is a weak technical divergence between the two, but that is sufficient to tip the balance in favor of  bears. We can trade DIA from either side of the market nevertheless as opportunities arise, but with a somewhat more negative bias than in the E-Mini S&Ps.

An interesting fact concerning the Mother of All Bear Rallies that has unfolded since March 23 is that it has exceeded but a single 'external' peak on the daily chart: 2499.00, on March 25. Strictly speaking this puts the rally in jeopardy of rolling over -- or rather, of continuing to roll over, following the April 30 recovery high at 2965.00. Assuming that is what is happening, the next plunge will take the futures down to p=2486.50. There is an alternative interpretation, however, that involves a rather finely nuanced question related to our Hidden Pivot rules.  To wit: Is the March 10 peak at 2873.00 a legitimate 'external' peak? Strictly speaking, it is not, since the price bar on which the peak occurred has not exceeded the bar to the left of it. Even so, there is reason for treating it as a true peak, since it most surely constitutes a significant point of resistance to any rally. This would make the a-b rally shown in this chart an impulse leg -- one capable of propelling the futures as high D=3177.50. I'll go with the bearish case for now, meaning I doubt we'll see a rally exceeding 2965.00, the so-far recovery high. (Be sure to check out my latest DIA tout, since it adds a bearish nuance to this analysis.) As a practical matter, however, there is no reason to be a hero by getting short at these levels with the intention of gutting it out come hell or high water. We'll trade conservatively from either side of the market as conditions warrant, but with an eye toward shorting a top that could give us a play on the next huge downdraft. More immediately, bears should be prepared for frustration in the days ahead, since last week's nerve-racking struggle failed

Chipotle makes its first appearance here in more than a year. A subscriber had asked about shorting into the stock's ballistic rally, but there are surely easier ways to make money. CMG's ascent into hyperspace is right up there with Tulipmania in the annals of mass folly. Ironically, the stock's bear market from 2015-18 was caused by two incidents where bacterial/viral agents had been detected in their food. Is business now better than ever, as the move into record territory would seem to imply? Hardly. It's simply benefiting from investors' desperate, heedless plunge into the shares of a relative handful of companies that can make money and perhaps even turn a profit in a time of pandemic. The weekly chart shows the stock to have topped last week a micron above a clear Hidden pivot target at 972.08. The implication is if it can close above that number for two consecutive weeks, or trade more than $20 above it intraday, D2=1107.76 will be in play. The latter target is calculated by bringing the point 'A' low down to the next obvious place. The ABC pattern is too obvious to work as perfectly as we like for purposes of producing a precisely shortable target,  but it should be good enough for government work. That means a pullback to p=760.49, however unlikely, would set up a so-so 'mechanical' buy, stop 645.92._____ UPDATE (May 19, 8:44 p.m. EDT): This rabid wolverine began the week with a $20 short-squeeze gap that has tightened the vise on shorts, if such a thing were possible. It may need a couple of days to digest the move,  but you should continue to use 1107.76 as a minimum objective in any event. Above it there is 1166.99 (120-min, A=599.78 on 4/3). More than ever, it would seem, we