Rick Ackerman

Yet another punk Friday suggests that the longest bull market in history is running out of gas. Considering that the war with Iran is a mop-up operation at this point, and that global jihad has suffered an extraordinary setback, the stock market should be celebrating. Instead, the S&P mini-futures couldn't even muster the last dozen or so points to reach a 6911.50 rally target I'd considered a lock-up.  The futures could have returned to the green line (x=6766.94) for a running start and another try; instead, they kept falling, canceling an ostensibly bullish pattern with a dip beneath its point 'c' low at 6718.75, just ahead of the opening bell. To complete this picture of feebleness, buyers went nowhere on Friday, even unburdened of bulls who were stopped out with the gratuitous dip beneath 6718.75. Now all DaBoyz can do is wait for "news" conducive to a short squeeze, which, as I never tire of reminding you, is where nearly all of the serious buying power comes from in bull markets. But if a decisive victory against the chief agent of evil in this world is not enough to spark such a rally, then what is? Instead, the focus of the hacks who invent the news is on the disruption of oil markets. It has been years since Wall Street much cared about events in the real world, much less a mostly imagined problem with oil shipments in the Persian Gulf (as evidenced by Israel's resumption of commercial air flights.) The Masters of the Universe should be looking past this, toward the resumption of business as usual. And yet, their dim lackeys in the news media seem crestfallen over Iran's impending defeat. (Tune to CNN for 30 minutes if you don't believe this.) Something is wrong with this picture, and

[Your editor is taking a busman's holiday in San Francisco. Although trading touts will update as usual and I'll be active in the chat room, this commentary and the next come from the archive. You can judge for yourself whether they were sufficiently on-target to still be relevant. RA] Stocks looked leaden as the week ended, adding to the impression that the aging bull market is topping. The Dow tacked on a perfunctory 104 points, or 0.22%, and it wasn't pretty. There was little life in the lunatic sector (aka 'the Magnificent Seven'), which until recently could be relied on to celebrate its wildest flights of fantasy on Fridays. The biggest winner in the bunch was META, which rose 1.80% on news that Zuckerberg is having second thoughts about his all-in bet on a metaverse. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a virtual world in which users interact online through avatars. Zuckerberg evidently thought there were hundreds of millions of us, if not billions, eager to escape the pain and drudgery of day-to-day life. He was so certain about this that he changed the name of his company in 2021 from Facebook to Meta.  But after sinking $70 billion into the concept, there has been precious little payback. Even more troubling to investors is that there are no obvious ways to make back what has been spent already, nor to recoup any further sums Meta might pour into the idea. Counting on Investors' Stupidity   To cover up this boo-boo, and to avoid being thought clueless, Zuckerberg did what any muckety-muck CEO in the digital world would have done: a twisting somersault onto the AI bandwagon.  "AI is the most important technology we are working on," he said, evidently hoping investors have forgotten that he spent the last

Rates on the 10-Year Note came within a hair on Friday of lows not seen since October. My suggestion is to enjoy it while it lasts, since the intraday bottom closely coincided with a Hidden Pivot target at 3.952%. The actual low was 3.956%, which was near enough to consider the target fulfilled. Alternatively, if the downtrend continues on Monday, breaching not just the target but October's 3.976% bottom, be ready for more slippage to 3.917%, a voodoo number worth bottom-fishing with as tight a stop-loss as you're comfortable with. _______ UPDATE (Mar 7): It looks like the prediction of an important low hit a bullseye, since this vehicle has since trampolined as high as 4,188 after bottoming a split hair from the 3.952 target. Here's the chart.

'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. _______ UPDATE (Feb 3, 3:59 pm.):  Do you see the 6720.00 target boldfaced above?  It not only correctly and confidently predicted the trend and the nasty, 155-point plunge that followed, it also caught the low of the dive within 1.75 points. Only two subscribers appear to have noticed any of this, and one of them, a novice with an extremely erratic track record, caught a profitable ride worth $3000 from within a hair of the low. If you got long there yourself and rode it to the top, the trade would have produced an intraday gain of $6500 per contract.  _______ UPDATE (Mar 5) Bears turned gutless after pounding the futures overnight. The resulting short-squeeze looked like it would top at 6911.50 to end yet another week of gratuitous spasms.

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. _______ UPDATE (Mar 5):  Sunday's rickisms in this space set a new world record for the number of forehead-slapping errors your editor has committed in a single tout. The 257.71 target boldfaced in the original tout, above, did indeed nail a tradeable low with the eye-popping precision you have come to expect from Rick's Picks. The trouble is, I used MSFT in the header, but the tout pertained to AAPL. Now here's where the rickisms grew so thick that some of you may have feared your editor had imbibed a bad dose of LSD; for in fact, the chart included with the tout showed neither Microsoft nor AAPL, but April Gold.  Fortunately, or perhaps not, there seems to be only one subscriber who remotely cares about Microsoft, and it is was hhis comment in the chat room about my "janky" tout that prompted this update. To make amends, I've replaced the gold chart with one of MSFT so that  you can see that things worked out almost precisely according to the forecast.  Because the alert subscriber is one of the most experienced traders who frequents the

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. _______ UPDATE (Mar 7): The 5510.40 Hidden Pivot remains viable as a minimum upside objective for the near term, but you can add another at 5732.00 if buyers easily push past it. This chart shows the provenance of the target.

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. ______ UPDATE (Mar 5): So much for my seppuku-worthy guarantee. Bears turned tail at 157.49, nearly $6 shy of the 163.11 target. wouldn't it be crazy if the 'mechanical' buy about to be signaled at x=131.46 went on to achieve 163.11? I wouldn't bet the ranch against it, since stranger things have happened. ______ UPDATE (Mar 8):  Actually, the 'mechanical' buy alluded to above does in fact have a chance of reaching the 163.11 target. Last week's low at 136.11 not only came within 0.05 of the target, it gave way to a bounce that has so far gone as high as 137.81. No one mentioned this in the chat room, so I can only infer that none of you much cares about this symbol, let alone trades it. Correct?

[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