Rick Ackerman

The spread between permabulls and permabears is at an extreme these days, even for October. This is the month when pessimists' hopes are highest that an epic bear market will correct dangerous excesses that have been building up in the financial system for more than 50 years. A presumptive and welcome side effect of such a crash is that it would reset things in accordance not with the designs of nefarious plotters, schemers and conspirators who meet every year in Davos, but in a more natural way that inflicts pain on borrowers and financial evildoers more or less in proportion to their sins. We permabears should be careful what we wish for, however, since deep hardship affecting the broad middle class, the poor and even the very affluent could persist for a long time -- perhaps a decade or more as occurred after the Crash of 1929. It is particularly troubling to consider that it took a world war in which 50 million people died to end the Great Depression rather than persistent fiscal and monetary meddling by the government. Anyone who thinks the Fed will ultimately lift us from the economic abyss into which we are about to descend should recognize that it is the banksters who will have put us there. The Death of Wokeness Meanwhile, it is unsurprising that some top technical forecasters disagree vehemently over what lies just ahead. One who sits in the pantheon of chartists says that, for cyclical reasons, the stock market is about to embark on a major rally. A colleague achieved instant success -- soon to become notoriety? -- with his own cycles-based forecast calling for a crash starting this week and continuing until the November election. Although I fear that a severe crash is coming that will tip the U.S.

Mr Market screwed with bulls' and bears' heads Friday, falling steadily and hard after making an intraday high just ahead of the opening bell. In the chat room, we anticipated this with jackpot bet recommendations in AMZN in AAPL that involved the purchase of puts early in the session. There were no significant rallies intraday, nor even the customary attempt by DaBoyz to put the squeeze on shorts in the final hour. Although this would have caused bulls to back away rather than gamble on a felicitous opening Sunday evening, the futures paradoxically would have generated an attractive 'mechanical' buy signal if they'd sold off even harder and reached the green line at 3564.00 (see inset).  That's what I am recommending, provided you're comfortable enough with 'reverse-pattern' trades to set up this one with entry risk held to no more than $150 per contract. A conventional entry, bidding at x with a stop at 3501.75, would not be appropriate because the initial risk would be around $3100 per contract. I am aware that many are bracing for a possible crash this week based on the widely circulated prediction of a guru who uses the lunar calendar. I doubt he'll be right, since forecasts that get as much attention as this one seldom pan out.  For my part, I can see more downside to only 3361.25 over the near term, but my outlook would darken if that Hidden Pivot support is easily breached.  I have been saying stocks are primed for a severe crash that could begin at any time (although probably not next week for the reason given). The first sign of this would appear if, as noted above, the 3361.25 'hidden' support is easily exceeded, especially on a closing basis soon after it is initially touched.  Regardless, this number

Last week's low just pennies beneath my 134.59 target would be an unlikely place for a good bottom, as a glance at the chart suggests. The stock will want to test the June low at 129.04 to bolster confidence for the next significant bear rally. We'll be on the alert to catch a ride north, but it's liable to take work and patience, since AAPL could noodle around down there for days or even weeks, stopping out bulls with so many false starts that they'll eventually give up. There's $9 of potential downside to exploit along the way, but that too will require close monitoring of the lesser charts. A 'voodoo' number at 131.41 looks promising for catching a tradeable bounce, so be ready when AAPL gets there. ______ UPDATE (Oct 17, 9:05 p.m.): AAPL's opportunistic leaps on the opening are by now so familiar that we should be shocked if DaBoyz ever attempt this money-saving trick with honest-to-goodness buying. Today's headbutting precisely at p=142.74 confirmed the pattern and its target, 147.19. Consider it a done deal if buyer's fist-pump their way past p, especially in the early going. An unexpected pullback to x=140.52, the green line, would trip an attractive 'mechanical' buy, stop 138.28. _______ UPDATE (Oct 18, 8:40 p.m.): The stock's handlers  let go of the leash, but it only seemed like they'd lost control. AAPL finished with a riskless/costless gain, leaving a classic 'mechanical' buy at the green line. I must confess that I was elsewhere at the time.

Don't get your hopes up that gold is going to make an important bottom any time soon. It had a chance to do so with the robust leap it took on September 28 from within a millimeter of the 1619 Hidden Pivot target shown in the chart. But the subsequent rally, which took a week to play out, fell just shy of a 1646 peak recorded three weeks earlier, narrowly failing to create an impulse leg of daily-chart degree. It would have been the first such occurrence in eight months and a welcome sign for beleaguered bulls. Alas, more disappointment seems likely if the December contract drops below 1619. That would turn the would-be impulse leg into a merely corrective one, sending gold groping for a bottom at, best case, 1600.

I'd hoped December Silver would bullishly trash the 'mechanical' short signaled on October 4, when the futures spiked to the green line, x=21.31 (see inset). Unfortunately, the signal proved to be a good one, foreshadowing this vehicle's punitive relapse toward a 16.84 downside target that has been in play since June 13, when the futures were trading for around 21.30. The pattern is gnarly enough to use for bottom-fishing, notwithstanding the possibility that my advertising it here will diminish its usefulness. _______ UPDATE (Oct 17, 9:10 p.m.): A relentless, ratcheting rally has generated a bullish impulse leg on the intraday charts. It was/is tradable with a bullish bias, but if you're keen on knowing when this rally turns real, set an alert at 19.295, just above a challenging peak recorded last Thursday on the way down.

As last week ended, crude was poised to slip into a vast void beneath two important 'structural' supports that lie, respectively, at 85.56 and 85.42. The November contract briefly traded beneath the lower of these numbers on Friday, but the subsequent bounce has been too weak so far to suggest it will hold aloft. There is no support between here and around 81.20, the approximate middle of a consolidation zone creating at the end of September. There a crucial test awaits, since further slippage into the $70s would undermine bullish confidence, such as it is.

Much of the dollar's rise this year has taken place with stochastic indicators extremely overbought, a common trait of powerful, enduring rallies. That's why the 117.17 target shown is likely to be hit before a significant correction sets in.  The pattern has signaled two winning trades - a short from p2=114.80 and a 'mechanical' buy at x=110.05 -- implying shorts from 117.17 would enjoy similar success. That is notwithstanding the pattern's obviousness. We don't typically trade this vehicle, but because it affects everything else, we monitor it closely. A strong dollar threatens to unravel the Fed's crackpot schemes and asphyxiate debtors both big and small around the world who owe dollars. _______ UPDATE (Oct 17, 9:18 p.m.): D=111.71 is my minimum downside objective, but this Hidden Pivot support must hold if bulls are to regain dominance. Here's the chart. _______ UPDATE (Oct 19, 10:20 p.m.): DXY has taken a robust bounce from 111.77, six cents above the target flagged above. This is encouraging, but the rally would need to surpass the 113.42 peak recorded last Friday for the dollar to get back on a roll.

A pen-pal from the world of very high-tech inventions is a self-described 'collapsitarian'. He wrote me recently to say he enjoys these weekly screeds for their relentlessly glum insightfulness. (For your information, he is 50% in cash, 25% in gold, and 25% short stocks.) Longtime readers will know that I seldom shout 'The Sky Is Falling!!' in a headline. Rather, the not-so-great news is dispensed matter-of-factly in the final sentence or two, where you are admonished to reef the sails, batten the hatches and retreat below. And if the vessel should pitchpole, leaving one badly shaken and crawling on the galley ceiling, what then?  Prepare for the 100-foot rogue wave yet to hit is about all I can advise. That's what I see coming, "probably" sooner rather than later. The disaster seems all too likely to arrive in the form of an unscheduled bank holiday that touches off a fatal spasm of debt deflation. I often reiterate in that final paragraph, matter-of-factly, that deflation is inevitable because, well, because it is. I've been writing about this-- some would say bloviating -- for long enough to have annoyed more than a few readers. One was upset about a particularly gloomy column I'd written 25 years ago for the San Francisco Examiner. He told me he managed $250 million and asked what qualified me to predict such a scary future. I responded by critiquing some minor errors of grammar and punctuation in his email. He shut me down with an unexpected reply. It turns out the $250 million was his personal money, and English was just one of six languages he, a cosmopolitan Iranian, spoke fluently. Our subsequent exchanges became increasingly friendly, and I never even asked how he'd fared with the enormous stake he'd amassed in Nokia. The Broken Clock Others

Bulls are revved up and ready to rumble, judging from the way they smashed through the 113.58 Hidden Pivot resistance two weeks ago (see inset). That told us that the selloff that ensued would prove to be merely corrective, as it has. They didn't pause for long to carve out a nice bottom, however; instead, a v-shaped trampoline bounce suggests buyers are headed straightaway for the 117.16 'D' target of this pattern. They'll need to get past p=113.61 first, but if it's a pushover, watch DXY rip even higher.