Rick Ackerman

Buyers on a roll for the last month have 7'd out just above the 2050.60 target shown.  An alternative target at 2079.40 still looks likely to be reached, but probably not straightaway. The lower target must have been widely anticipated, since the futures head-faked above it a week later just to jack shorts who would have been celebrating the refreshing but short-lived $54 drop a week earlier. We'll focus on short-term opportunities for the time being, with a mildly bearish bias. _______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 11:45 p.m.): My explicit guidance for getting long this morning produced a winner that could have been worth as much as $9,600 on four contracts. Traders would have experienced little stress on the ascent, since the trade proceeded straightforwardly from a voodoo number that caught the intraday low to the exact tick. Here's the chart. For further details, and to determine whether you could have followed my instruction, see related posts from 8:12 a.m. forward. _______ UPDATE (Apr 20, 10:52 p.m.): Navel-gazing has driven gold psychotic, even if its price action is as predictable as ever. The June contract is currently bound for the 2028.80 target shown in this chart -- and yes, it is shortable if you know how to manage the risk tightly. _______ UPDATE (Apr 21, 8:22 a.m.):  The bearish, 1963.00 target in this chart goes against gold's daily drug habit of reversing overnight smashes as the regular session begins, but that's what will happen if sellers break p=1993.80 decisively. If you're planning on bottom-fishing, be alert to the possibility that using the slightly higher 'A' available in the chart could lower the bottom from which the futures are likely to bounce to 1961.60.

A chart stretching back to November provides no compelling technical basis for saying anything interesting, let alone bullish or bearish, about what might happen next. It's anyone's guess, although the June contract would have to eat through thick layers of supply to achieve new recovery highs above February's 4244 peak.  Poor earnings would help, since the mere expectation of them is usually enough to get stocks sold out before the news hits. With or without grim tidings to drive the rally, we can be assured that intraday highs and lows will continue to be predictable enough to give us an edge. Friday's peak, for instance, missed a 'D' Hidden Pivot target that was as obvious as the punchline of a mile-long stretch of Burma Shave signs. _______ UPDATE (Apr 20, 11:12 p.m.): There are some days when we should just avert our eyes and this was one of them.  A sinking VIX belies the nuttiness animating stocks these days. We should start loading up on puts today and Monday, because I strongly doubt that these histrionics are torquing the market for an ebullient move higher. That seems doubly true with The Wall Street Journal's bullish spin on...everything starting to sound increasingly desperate.  DaBoyz are getting ready to pull the plug.

May Silver on Friday precisely fulfilled a Hidden Pivot target at 26.20 that was six months in coming. The actual high was 26.23, but don't expect much more than that for the time being, since buyers could use a rest. Two or three weeks could enable them to recover, but in the meantime we'll trade this contract with a bearish bias. We should also pay close attention to corrective ABC patterns, since an overshoot of their d targets would signal more downside while sharpening our assessment of trend strength.

GDXJ turned south well shy of the 45.57 rally target we've been using for the last few weeks. If Comex Gold and Silver futures had not made what appear to be intermediate-term tops at the same time, I'd be more confident about GDXJ fulfilling its price objective.  Its rally has been even steeper than gold's, but perhaps that means it will lead the way higher once this correction in bullion has run its course. A drop to the red line would signal a 'mechanical' buying opportunity, but a death dive to x=35.39, however scary, would be even more enticing as a place to reload.

AAPL's ascent toward a longstanding target at 176.52 has been untroubled, with no swoons ugly enough to enable a 'mechanical' buy on the way up.  Nor has the rally been steep enough to make owning call options profitable. Selling them short has been the ticket, and that's probably one reason the stock's handlers have been content to get where they're going slowly but surely. This is going to be little help to us, although there may be opportunities to place jackpot bets with options that sometimes get underpriced.  Stay tuned if you care. ______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 2:14 p.m.): The stock is closing on double resistance that could be shortable. See the chat room discussion for further details. ______ UPDATE (Apr 20, 11:22 p.m.); The intraday short-squeezes and gap-up opening bars have turned so ferocious lately that you just know DaBoyz are trying to Mau-Mau bears before turning out the lights. Hang onto those puts!

Bertie fulfilled my longstanding target at 30,873 last week with a 31,014 high that overshot the mark by 0.4%. The pattern is sufficiently clear and compelling that I'd be surprised if the rally were to continue without a serious correction first. So far, the selloff has been mild, amounting to a thousand points, or three percent. The Hidden Pivot levels are spent for trading purposes in any case, so any recommendations I might make in the chat room would be based on smaller patterns derived from the intraday charts.  Budge me if you care, since I can discern little interest in this vehicle at this time. This is odd, since my price and trend forecasts have been dead on and also oblivious to the blather and hubris of 'experts'. _______ UPDATE (Apr 17, 6:50 p.m.): Check my 17:57 post in the chat room for a precise downside target, since I don't want to queer its dark magic by billboarding it here. _______ UPDATE (Apr 18, 9:10 a.m.): Bitcoin trampolined $1300 overnight, but not before getting within less than a tenth of a percentage point of the 29,105 target I loudly drum-rolled yesterday (17:57) in the chat room. Its masters may think they're the ones rigging the game, but as you can plainly see, they themselves are limited and ultimately controlled by Hidden Pivot levels. Here's the chart. _______ UPDATE (Apr 19, 11:54 p.m.): Too bad no one gives a rat's ass about these bitcoin touts, since the precise highs and lows Bertie's tradeable swings are nearly as predictable as tomorrow's sunrise.  Here's a chart showing the failure once again of Bertie's handlers to break out of a maze that they don't even know exists. 

The toppy look of Anheuser-Busch's stock chart (above) implies that the company is at least somewhat likely to lose sales because of its attempt to shove the wretchedly unlovely Dylan Mulvaney down our throats.  Bud Light is undrinkable pisswater to begin with, so perhaps we should not be cheering on the frat boys who made it America's #1 rotgut, surpassing even Rolling Rock, but giving begrudging credit to the woke schemer in A-B's marketing department who managed to spin the brand out to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Choosing a flaming fruitcake to be Bud Light's spokeswhatever was the brainchild of a 39-year-old, Ivy-educated provocateur named Alissa Heinerscheid, and there's no denying that the brewhaha this prank stirred up has made her a hero to half of America. But that still leaves the other half to boycott Bud Light and sundry other products distributed by Anheuser-Busch. The list includes Stella Artois (which, despite its popularity in the U.S., Belgians evidently regard as their pisswater), Monster Energy Drink and a gallimaufry of craft beers. Dylan's Journey It is by no means assured that Anheuser will lose out, let alone that they will cashier Heinerscheid. Before she even hired Mulvaney, the vomitous saga of his regression to faux girlhood had attracted a reported five million gawkers on TikTok. He is a top influencer and arguably unmenacing as long as he's not chatting up little girls in the schoolyard. Fortunately, Heinerscheid's reach does not yet extend into our back yards. And it is just possible that overexposure will soon force her and her employer to back the hell off. To support this outcome, here's a supposed photo of her cavorting with fratty girls at a Harvard party in 2005. Blowing up condoms, admittedly, is unexceptionable behavior for party girls and debutantes who

The Dollar Index dipped below the red line (p=102.30, a 'hidden' support') for the third straight week, but this time it closed beneath it, implying more slippage over the next few weeks to at least D=98.71. Although this will lighten selling that has weighed on bullion, it will also increase the intensity of the world's nascent revolt against the dollar. The insurrection can only go so far, however, since the huge, largely unpayable debts that have piled up around the world are in dollars, effectively creating a massive short position against the greenback. This will ultimately come home to roost in the only way it can, via a deflation that liquidates all debts through bankruptcy. Economists and pundits seem to think the Fed will pull a 'Weimar' and hyperinflate the debt away, but there are a hundred good reasons why this scenario is an extreme outlier. I've written extensively on the topic over the last 30 years, but read Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies if you want to understand why boxcars filled with dollars will not be a feature of America's coming economic collapse.

We've been using the 2079.40 target shown as a minimum upside objective, but there's a yellow flag out at the moment because Friday's high at 2049.20 precisely coincided with Hidden Pivot resistance levels associated with two bullish patterns, including the one targeted on 2079.40.  The pattern has already enabled a 'mechanical' buy at the green line that could have been worth as much as $6400 per contract. A second such signal would occur on a pullback to 1985.10, stop 1953.60, but I'll suggest tuning to the chat room if the opportunity gets close, since theoretical entry risk exceeds $3000 per contract. ______ UPDATE (Apr 11, 9:52 p.m. EDT): The futures look all but certain to achieve the 2029.50 target of this pattern, but the picture would brighten still move if this thrust can take out the 2031 peak to the left without pausing for breath. _______ UPDATE (Apr 12, 5:49 p.m.): The rally accomplished what we'd asked of it, then gold did its by-now-obligatory Daily Dive. A score more of them will not change the fact that this is a bull market and that all upside targets provided here for the foreseeable future will be achieved more or less exactly, if sometimes tortuously.