Rick Ackerman

'Mechanical ' sell signals have a great track record for producing profits, but the waiting time lately has become tortuous. This could be because the white-shoe racketeers who rig the markets have lacked sufficient "news," good or bad, to trigger the wild swings needed to steal from panicky retail investors. Trump's bloviations have lost their punch, and Fed-watching has devolved into something like Kremlinology, too arcane to parse.  Be that as it may, the futures remain on-target for a further fall to at least 6720.00. I canceled a corresponding short in QQQ Friday on the hunch that it would take hours to grind out a relatively small profit. That is what happened, and don't be surprised if Monday and the week ahead offer more of the same.  The big moves have come early in the week lately, presumably because it takes a few days for lack of mass indecision and uncertainty to slip into its by-now-familiar rut.

Bottom-fishing at the 257.71 target of this pattern looks so promising that I hate to queer its magic with this semi-public ad.  The target looks likely to be reached because the stock never poked above p=266.91 after first penetrating it on the way down. Still, the failure to bounce precisely from the secondary Hidden Pivot (p2=262.31) is more than a little mystifying, since it is highly unlikely the support was front-run. (I've masked two coordinates for proprietary reasons).  I would call this a back-up-the-truck trade if the target had been disseminated and triggered intraday. As things stand, however, you'll need to use small-pattern 'camo' to get aboard with risk held to a practical minimum.

Despite Gold's labored price action near the midpoint Hidden Pivot (p=4950.00), it looks like a certain bet to reach the d target at 5476.70, about 3.4% above Friday's settlement price. Since it delivered a perfect, effortless trade at the green line a month ago, there is a good chance that a tradeable top will occur at d. I am not recommending a short there, however, unless you have made money on the way up.  You should also be aware that if buyers blow past the target, the next logical objective would be 5732.00, a Hidden Pivot resistance that is likely to show more stopping power than the lower one.  ________ UPDATE (Mar 1, 10:49 p.m.): Tonight's breakaway gap has raised the short-term minimum target to 5510.40, a Hidden Pivot with the potential to reverse the rally for a little while. The other rally targets remain viable.

It took buyers all of three days to gnaw through heavy resistance at the 90.165 midpoint Hidden Pivot of the pattern shown. Adding to the challenge was the 92.015 peak recorded on Feb 4.  It had served as a stop-loss for a 'mechanical' short from 10 points lower that I had suggested paper-trading to gauge the strength of the uptrend. Although Friday's rally did not impale p, which we would have taken as a sign that more upside to d=116.43 was in-the-bag, bulls made such short work of it that there is little doubt the target will be reached. For now, however, let's use p2=103.298 as a minimum upside projection for the near term. It should show enough stopping power to get short, if only briefly, but I am recommending the trade only to subscribers who know how to manage the risk by using a small-interval trigger (aka 'camouflage'). _______ UPDATE (Mar 2, 3:11 p.m.): Check the chat room for timely posts related to Silver -- and please note that they all reference the MAY contract. Basis the May, d=117.485, p2=104.279 and p=91.073

GDXJ had a constructive week, exceeding p2=152.56 just days after shredding the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 142.01. This one-two punch has all but guaranteed more upside in the days ahead to at least D=163.11.  Given the clarity of the pattern, there is almost certain to be tradeable resistance there. But the coordinates are too visually obvious to expect precise stopping power, so you'll need to fashion a 'camo' trigger if you plan on getting short. Naked-shorting call options is another way to go, provided you understand the risks.  This is the best way to get short if you expect a few days' worth of evasions, feints and obfuscations as GDXJ attempts to shake off traders who will be trying to get short at 'our' D target.

[Events in the Middle East have overshadowed my narrow economic critique of President Trump in the commentary below.  His alliance with Israel to knock out global jihad's command structure is likely to change the world in ways no one can predict. It will also test the idea that only military might can secure a lasting peace.  RA ] Stocks used to turn feisty toward the end of the week, but as the chart shows, the last few 'Freaky Fridays' have been pretty tame. My gut feeling is that this picture of tedium is the calm before the storm, and that stocks are being heavily distributed ahead of a major breakdown. Although I promised a few weeks ago that I wouldn't mention the words 'topping process' again, the alternative would make me sound like a Wall Street shill. The Street's best and brightest have been flat-out bullish on stocks since the 1929 Crash, having failed to issue a sell signal even on stocks implicated in some of the biggest scandals of the last hundred years. To cite a particularly notorious example, many of them were gung-ho on the shares of Equity Funding until the moment regulators halted trading in the stock one day in March 1973. Read about it here. So why have shares been unable to develop a head of steam on Fridays, when irrational exuberance has typically been highest?  There are two likely reasons. For one, the AI Bubble has popped. This occurred without much fanfare on January 29, when Microsoft shares dove $60, or 12%, overnight. The shills initially took this for a one-off event, an 'adjustment' in the share price of a big company they felt was heavily over-invested in AI. Rick's Picks saw it as the beginning of the end for AI mania and said so

Friday's tedium was murderous, although the half-dozen-or-so trades that I posted in the chat room, most of which went against the trend, were all winners. (Check the time stamps if you want to retro-engineer my tactics on the lesser charts.)  Choppy action in this vehicle consumed the entire week, but it did not change the likelihood of a corrective decline to at least 6720.00, a Hidden Pivot target that should be familiar by now. A feint to the green line (x=6938.75) would trigger a 'mechanical' short, stop 7012.00, but I am recommending it only to subscribers who know how to counterpunch the little sonofabitch.

The bullish view of Gold (see inset) is somewhat different from the one shown in the current Silver tout. Both were on 'mechanical' sell signals, and that is what the latter chart was intended to visualize. However, this chart has taken the further step of extrapolating the next, likely rally leg. It projects to 5476.70, and while price action at the 4950.00 Hidden Pivot midpoint does not quite guarantee the target will be achieved, it's a reasonable bet as a minimum upside objective for the week ahead.  A stall at p2=5213.30, the secondary Hidden Pivot, would confirm that the pattern shown will continue to control Gold's movement until such time as 5476.70 is achieved.

I posted a moderately bearish note in Silver in the chat room Friday, but by day's end the little monster was threatening to trash my logic.  The March contract was on 'mechanical' short signals in two different time frames, one big, the other small, and things could have gone either way.  In fact, things went bonkers, stopping just shy of the 86.13 print needed to negate the lesser 'sell' signal.  Above it sits 91.285, which some may recall as the location of a stop-loss for the bigger-picture 'mechanical' short.  We should wait until these numbers are actually exceeded before we open a can of whoop-ass, but bullion looked primed to blow higher when trading resumes on Sunday.