The manipulation of bitcoin's price has become almost too tedious to watch. Price action is simultaneously boring and bizarre, since bitcoin doesn't attract much interest from shorts. This is paradoxical, considering that cryptos have evolved into a purely speculative vehicle with little practical value in the world of goods, services and transactions. The 30,873 target given here previously still obtains. It will be reached not because of any increase in bullish demand, but on the vapors of cyclical mood swings that give its canny handlers a riskless opportunity to withdraw supply and let 'er waft on near-zero volume.
Anyone who has played around with ChatGPT knows that it is just dumb enough to succeed wildly. It harbors no opinions, grudges or wit, and it can talk a blue streak without saying anything interesting or exceptionable. This kind of artificial intelligence seems perfectly suited to mimicking the rote tasks that lawyers charge clients hundreds or even thousands of dollars an hour to perform. And not just churning out boilerplate, either. Put a voice-activated bot in a courtroom and, without a mote of prejudice, it will prosecute or defend whoever is in the docket by drawing on the entire, vast library of U.S. jurisprudence. Will we even need judges to decide cases or instruct juries when machine intelligence can split hairs of precedent down to inarguable singularity? These thoughts occurred to me as I reviewed a lawyer letter for which I had paid a South Florida attorney $1,000. He made a novel argument concerning why I would be suing the officers of a particular company personally rather than corporately. Their lawyer responded with two thousand words that said, basically, you can't do that, and here's why. These shysters would still be slinging legalese at each other for $450 an hour if I hadn't pulled the plug on my guy. I'd paid him $2500 as a retainer; his invoice -- including time spent tallying up the bill! -- was for $2469. A coincidence, I'm sure. The invoice was stamped 'Paid in full', but I had to remind him that he still owed me the $31 difference. Small wonder that lawyer jokes are so vicious: What's brown and black and looks good on a lawyer? A Doberman. The ABA's Turf There can be no doubt that a lawyerly version of ChatGPT will soon enable litigants to cut to the chase, and for
A spirited push higher on Friday easily exceeded the 39.52 target we've been using, setting GDXJ up for a crucial test that would be strongly impulsive if it can get past the two peaks shown (inset) without pausing for breath. The higher of them lies at 42.19, and a two-day close above it would all but ensure further progress to at least p=49.02. Because gold is in a bull market, it is appropriate at this time to show what's possible over the long term -- in this case an ambitious target at 72.23 that has never been aired here before. For the time being, though, we'll use p=49.02 as a minimum upside projection, with an eye toward low-risk 'mechanical' entries to augment long positions on the way up. _______ UPDATE (Apr 5, 9:56 p.m. EDT): Today's bull-trap thrust to 42.05 got within 0.3% of the target, so it should be considered fulfilled. If GDXJ surprises with a second-wind lunge above the high within the next 2-3 days, that would be quite bullish.
When a subscriber posted another guru's 6000 target for the S&Ps, my first thought was, oh great, how does an honest forecaster compete with a publicity seeker who billboards such an outrageously bullish target? But when I replicated the guy's chart pattern, I was forced to conclude that a moon shot to 6000 would not be so outrageous after all. A corresponding Hidden Pivot target lies at 6136, a less-than-exact number because I've used a composite chart to calculate it. A theoretical rally to 6136 has already been signaled by two feints above the green line since December. The line is about to be head-butted for a third time, and probably surpassed. If the June futures were to pop through it this time and then push above last August's peak at 4327 (which is likely if ESM23 closes for two weekly bars above X=4160), I'd infer that a test of p=4819 is no worse than an odds-on bet. That would be equal to the all-time high at 4800 recorded on January 4, 2022, and, probably, a launching pad for a blowoff to 6136. _____ UPDATE (Apr 4, 7:52 p.m. EDT): The futures came down hard after hitting the 4171.50 rally target of a textbook-obvious pattern that had been widely promoted in the trading world. Some saw it as the beginning of a landslide, and that would certainly be nice. But cooler heads will have an opportunity to prevail tomorrow, so permabears shouldn't get their hopes too high. _______ UPDATE (Apr 5, 9:50 p.m.): Bears can count on a fall to at least D=4088.00, but if this Hidden Pivot support fails, expect more slippage to 4070 or lower. Here's the chart.
Bulls and bears both held their cards close to their chests last week. The latter cannot bluff effectively or for long, however, since bullion is in a bull market. However, the question on everyone's minds is whether gold is overdue for a punitive correction of the $350 run-up since November. Price action relative to the pennant formation shown in the chart (inset) should tell us soon whether a bearish outcome is likely, but there is nothing that I can discern in the chart that argues for betting the ranch on a particular scenario. For now, brace for savage, meaningless feints. most of them lower, since the quasi-criminals responsible for gold's gratuitous swoons have sufficient control over the futures to peg their price nearly anywhere over the short term. ______ UPDATE (Apr 3, 5:37 p.m. EDT): The ass-bandits took out the lower trendline on very light volume to begin the day, then bought aggressively to drive the futures nearly to the upper trendline by midday. I've altered the pennant somewhat to keep the futures within bounds, but don't expect the thieves to pull the same stunt if the break-out is to the upside, since they won't be able to trick buyers as easily as they suckered sellers. Here's the new chart. _______ UPDATE (Apr 4, 12:13 p.m.): Gold's impaling spike through p=2016 this morning implies more upside over the near term to at least 2079.40. Here's the chart -- and yes, the pattern should work well for 'mechanical' buying on swoons. _______ UPDATE (Apr 5, 10:01 p.m.): The futures will be headed down to exactly 2018.00 straightaway if support at the 2029 midpoint Hidden Pivot fails. _______ UPDATE (Apr 6, 7:45 a.m.): Well, I guess we'll just have to see about that. June Gold cracked $2029 overnight, then reversed as it nearly always
Well, they finally indicted the proverbial ham sandwich last week, adding to our long list of worries that the world really is falling apart. It’s as good a time as any to trot out William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming as a reminder of where things are headed. This is arguably the most powerful poem in the English language, so let your imagination run free as you read it: The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Opinions differed as to what the criminal indictment of our former president might mean politically. For The New York Piece of Shit Times, it was “a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.” The Zapruder Awakening For fully half of the nation’s voters, however, the Manhattan grand jury’s decision to charge Trump with paying hush money to a former mistress was just more Theatre of the Absurd from the same people who would have us believe Hunter Biden was framed. But there were no allegations of Russian disinformation this time, so perhaps the nation is making progress, however tiny, toward restoring civility and sanity to public discourse. Both last obtained until the early 1960s, before the Zapruder film raised questions about who killed JFK. For better or worse, the stock market’s wildly erratic brand of sanity held constant last week as shares rallied strongly into simultaneous threats of global war, a run on regional banks, a drag-queen putsch in the nation’s cafetoriums, and an increasingly woke military leadership
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
