Rick Ackerman

After shaking off a gratuitous midweek smackdown, June Gold was bounding on Friday toward the Hidden Pivot rally target at 2052.00 shown in the thumbnail chart. Buyers looked sufficiently revved up to achieve this objective easily within the next couple of days. If they do, and especially if they close above it for two consecutive days, you can confidently infer the futures are on their way to at least 2154.50, the next Hidden Pivot resistance of importance. It is derived from the pattern on the daily chart starting with A=1830.20 on March 8, and B=2031.70 on March 20. _______ UPDATE (Mar 29, 7:56 p.m. EDT): Here's a more challenging view of gold -- a pennant formation that visually raises doubts about 2052.00 being a lock-up. If the June contract cracks the lower trendline, I'd brace for more disappointment.

We've been using a Hidden Pivot at 23.89 as a rally target, but buyers handled the 23.21 midpoint resistance of a larger pattern with such brio on Friday that I've switched to that pattern, with a 26.47 target that significantly raises the ceiling for the near-to-intermediate-term. Odds of a run-up to that number would shorten if the futures close above 23.34 for a second consecutive day.  The pattern should work well for 'mechanical' buying on the way up if you want to augment a long position. However, because theoretical entry risk would be a little more than $8,000 per contract , the trade should not be attempted without a 'camouflage' trigger capable of reducing that by at least 90%.

The 39.52 rally target shown corresponds to my immediate, respective targets for June Gold and May Silver. That's good reason to be cautious if and when the target is reached. I expect a tradeable pullback in any case, but the most bullish scenario for bullion would be for buyers to forge past the 'hidden resistance' quickly and without much trouble. To play the countertrend, consider doing covered writes against long positions or even shorting GDXJ with put options if and when it gets within 0.20 or so of the target. _______ UPDATE (Mar 29, 8:08 p.m. EDT): Careful! Today's pop to 39.38 came close enough to the target for it to be considered fulfilled.  No one mentioned it, so I won't be providing any follow-up till I refresh touts on Sunday. The 'buy' signal flashed on March 13, telegraphing a 17% move from 34.07.   

Because it came precisely off a 64.25 Hidden Pivot target that was nearly nine months in coming, crude's so-far 10% rebound should continue to run for several weeks or longer. However, it would take a print topping the 81.07 'external' peak recorded on March 7 to generate an impulse leg capable of ending a bear market that saw crude's price fall by a third since apexed last August at 101.66. If the recent low were to be exceeded, the futures would likely be headed down to approximately 56, a target culled from a continuous-contract daily chart with ABC coordinates on the same dates as the one shown in the inset. _______ UPDATE (Apr 3, 1:59 p.m. EDT): Crude has taken a lunatic leap to just above 81.07 today on news that Saudi Arabia plans to cut output by 1.5 million barrels per day. Credit our President, whose brain unfortunately is not sufficiently rotted to prevent him from driving an erstwhile ally into the arms of China, Russia and Iran. Because I never trust big countertrend moves when they've been triggered by headline news, I will raise the bar to 83.05 to signal a possible end to the bear market begun from 101.66 last June.  That's a penny above an important peak recorded on January 23. _______ UPDATE (Apr 12, 6:23 p.m.): The May contract poked its greasy little snout above my 83.05 benchmark and even managed to close above it. I'll reflexively raise the bar to 87.40 before I start trusting this heavily engineered rally. That's a tick above a daunting 'external' peak recorded on November 7. I've never regarded cartel cutbacks in production as remotely sufficient to offset falling demand caused by global recession. The world desperately needs higher energy prices to support vast borrowings hocked against energy resources, and

Both the uptrend and a smaller downtrend are shown in the chart, but with a bullish bias favoring an upthrust to D=4147.50 over the near term.  This is justified by an impulsive spike midweek to 4073.75 that slightly exceeded a small 'external' peak recorded on March 9.  The smaller abc downtrend could conceivably reach D=3793.50, but I doubt this will occur in the days ahead for the reason stated above, but also because the futures reversed almost precisely from the Hidden Pivot midpoint (p) at 3933.63.  That is usually a sign that the dominant trend (i.e., up) is still controlling price action. If you trade this vehicle, your bias should be bullish for now, with a focus on 'camo' set-ups on the intraday charts that use price bars going back to around March 1. _______ UPDATE (Mar 29, 8:20 p.m. EDT):  Buyers made solid headway toward the 4113.50 target that I posted in the chat room on Tuesday, but it's not a done deal until the futures blow past p2=4069.38. Notice that the rally began at the green line with a perfect 'mechanical' buy signal.

Bellwether AAPL, as well as the broad averages, are likely headed significantly higher as the bear market rally begun in October continues to challenge the endurance of pessimists. Accordingly, to project a new target at 176.52, I've relocated the point 'A' low of the pattern we've been using at a one-off low recorded in January. The stock will need to punch through p=160.21 more persuasively before we raise the likelihood of D's attainment to near-certitude, but for now you can use a swoon to x=152.08, however unlikely, as a juicy opportunity to get long 'mechanically'.

The impulsive phase of Bertie's rally is quite steep, and I therefore doubt that C-D can replicate it. D=30,873 looks quite achievable nonetheless, and so you can use the pattern shown to get long 'mechanically' with a bid at x-25,676, stop 23,942.  We don't typically risk that much initiating trades, so I am suggesting this one only to traders who know how to cut the entry risk by 90% of more with a 'camouflage' trigger. Please note that BRTI is not a tradeable symbol, but rather a real-time reckoning of best bids and offers across a wide variety of cryptos. ______ UPDATE (Mar 31, 9:10 a.m.): Bertie took a gratuitous poke at p2=29,141 that did not alter the odds of a finishing stroke to D=30,873. Here's the new chart.

When I refer to Fed chairman Powell or to the Fed governors, collectively, as morons, I'm not suggesting that readers take this characterization literally. Indeed, most of them have IQs that are probably twice the 51-70 range that would categorize a person clinically as a moron. (It is only when casting aspersions on politicians, some of whom demonstrate persuasively and often that their IQs are in the 26-50 range, that the term "imbecile" may be construed literally.) To give economists their due -- even economists like Powell and 'Easy Al' Greenspan, who were elevated to positions of leadership by, mostly, political imbeciles -- the men (and woman: Janet Yellen ) who inventively script U.S. monetary policy are intelligent and well-schooled. It is only when they attempt to bend their knowledge toward the running of the economy that we see clear evidence of impaired thinking. How else to characterize the moronic idea that the more we borrow, the richer we become? And yet, so devoted are economists to this crackpot scheme that they would set it aside only temporarily when it appears to beckon disaster. They tighten, that is, only to set up the next phase of easing. This has been the Fed's MO since the central bank was created in 1913 as an instrument financiers could use to steal from the rest of us without detection. The ruse has succeeded to a degree that even the greediest of them may never have imagined, but at the cost of creating increasingly devastating boom-and-bust economic cycles over the last hundred years. We're All Bozos We are all complicit, to be sure, since the Fed is able to 'manage our expectations' only because tens of millions of Americans think and act like economic morons. For instance, we borrow against inflated home values to

The dollar has looked like hell for the last three weeks, but I've given it the bullish benefit of the doubt nonetheless because DXY signaled an appealing 'mechanical' buy with last Wednesday's fall to the green line (x=102.60). The implied rally target of the modest rABC pattern shown is 107.92, but that Hidden Pivot resistance would need to be slightly exceeded in order to take out a crucial external peak at 107.99 recorded last November. That would signal the likely return of the long-term bull market begun at the start of 2021 from 80.21. Alternatively, if the dollar continues to fall, it should be presumed bound for the 98.71 target shown here. This pattern also strongly implies that DXY should be 'mechanically' shorted at the green line (x=104.09). The bullish target at 107.92 would still be viable unless 100.82 were exceeded to the downside. (That's the 'c' low of the pattern shown in the inset.)