Rick Ackerman

Would a rally like the hypothetical one shown in the chart make you more hopeful? Good. Then let's set an alert at 21.31 to tell us when it is appropriate to turn optimistic, if not exuberant. In the meantime, Silver can be traded bullishly or bearishly as warranted, since there is still plenty of money to be made if it merely trades sideways. My latest gold tout is more downbeat than that, however, so you should be prepared to see Silver dragged lower.

I try to avoid patterns as obvious as this one, but it's the best we've got at the moment. Last week's stab through p=88.29 is bullish, but it doesn't guarantee a finishing stroke to D=95.28. Actually, I'd be inclined to try shorting the futures a dollar or so below D at whatever 'voodoo' number we can scare up at the time. In the meantime, my bias is bullish, predicated on minimum upside to p2=91.79. A pullback to the green line (x=84.80) should be regarded as an attractive opportunity to get long 'mechanically'.  There is $14,000 of theoretical entry risk, so the trade is recommended only to those who know how to reduce it by at least 90% using a 'camouflage' trigger.

This T-Bond proxy has taken an encouraging bounce off last Monday's 91.85 low, but the prospect of the rally getting legs is still shaky. It is concerning that last week's high at 97.90 failed by 49 cents to surpass the lowest of a series of external peaks recorded in recent weeks (see inset).  If TLT gets second wind in the days ahead, it will need to use its running start to clear all of the peaks to look impressive.

The long-term chart shows why the month of weakness we've seen so far may not be enough to correct the moon shot begun in mid-2021. Just a little more selling will bring the Dollar Index down to a Hidden Pivot target at 109.22 that has served as a minimum downside objective for the last two months. However, the downtrend would need to surpass the 'external' low at 107.68 to turn the weekly chart bearishly impulsive. For now, let's see how the 'hidden' support at 109.22 handles whatever pounding occurs there if the dollar relapses. _____ UPDATE (Nov 8, 11:10 a.m.): Price action over the last two days has provided a new ABCD pattern with a 108.75 target. I expect DXY to get there, and also to reverse off a low within a few ticks. Here's the chart. _______UPDATE (Nov 10, 8:51 p.m.): Following a steep dive on the opening bar, DXY got traction at 108.75, but this 'hidden' support' failed and it plunged anew to 107.71.  This suggests more weakness ahead, but a push above 109.09 to end the week would earn dollar bulls a reprieve.

The string of lows precisely at the 27.62 midpoint support of the pattern shown (inset) suggests it will work well for purposes of forecasting and trading in the days and weeks ahead. GDXJ is in fact on a 'mechanical' sell signal at the moment. The short was triggered by the rally from the red line to the green, but because the low did not occur near our sweet spot midway between p and p2, I am not recommending the trade. Since the midpoint support has held perfectly so far, there is no basis for inferring that D=22.89 is likely to be reached.  The outlook for the next few weeks would brighten if a rally above C=32.35 negates the bearish pattern.

The thimble-riggers who control Apple shares have done a brilliant job holding the stock market aloft. Ingeniously engineered short-squeeze rallies in the world’s most valuable stock have helped sustain the illusion that the U.S. economy will somehow muddle through a deepening recession that is still disingenuously described by Biden and his economists as a ‘rough patch’. Unfortunately, factors that are about to bring the stock market and the economy crashing down are firmly in place and inured to happy talk. This is notwithstanding the carnival-midway shenanigans of trade-desk mechanics who are paid not merely to exploit big moves in stocks, but to create them. This they accomplished last Thursday in AAPL to spectacular effect. The company is entering the most challenging retail environment it has faced in more than two decades, but you’d never know it from the way Apple shares faced down a brutal gauntlet of analysts last week that earlier in the day had mauled two FAANG stalwarts, Amazon and the company formerly known as Facebook. With 2023 shaping up for them as a bust, their stocks plunged by 21% and 25% respectively in mere minutes. Apple couched its after-hours announcement more delicately, but only a fool would have ignored the devastating impact that simultaneous recessions in the U.S., Europe and China are about to have on iPhone sales. Fools Rush In Unsurprisingly, enough fools evidently did overlook the deep-purple clouds to provide AAPL’s handlers with perfect conditions to short-squeeze the stock 15% overnight, leaving it significantly higher than before the news. This will give Wall Street a couple more weeks of breathing room to distribute stocks, since, with earnings for the most important corporate giants out of the way, the impact of downbeat reports from hundreds of other, much smaller companies will be muted. The effectiveness of

I hope you'll pardon these two atrociously mixed metaphors, but separately they ring true, at least to me: AAPL, having lost one engine, has leveled off at cruising altitude and looks like it is fixing to screw the pooch indefinitely.  Ordinarily I would say that the weekly chart (see inset) reflects dithering uncertainty, except that the thieves who routinely and mechanistically rig AAPL's price action are never without intentions. Thus would it appear they are planning to hold the stock aloft for as long as possible, massaging it within the approximate range 120-175. Distribution will likely intensify above 160; accumulation, below 150. From a technical standpoint, the irresolute chart follows from the fact that neither the big move down in April-May, nor the steep rally in June-August, generated a true impulse leg on the weekly chart. To be more specific, the last-gasp low bar in mid-June did not exceed an additional 'external' low as required. This typically sets up duels between bulls and bears that can last for a long time. Keep in mind that AAPL remains a perfectly reliable bellwether for the stock market as a whole. The implication is that if my forecast is correct, we are about to experience an extended period of trendlessness. I'd thought the gratuitous swings to nowhere in both directions would persist only until the November elections, but I am now prepared to watch pointless price action continue more or less indefinitely. This would not likely happen if the Democrats were about to win, since that would leave the nation on a slick track to economic ruin and possibly civil war.  Judging from the chart, however, it looks like GOP candidates will prevail. Even though that could conceivably delay the financial implosion that is coming while also driving a stake through the heart

The bullish pattern shown is gnarly enough to work, whether you are trying to nail a short-term top, forecast intraday swings or bottom-fish on pullbacks. It also assumes that the vicious short squeeze in progress at the closing bell on Friday will carry into the new week. That's hardly a given, considering the balky behavior and arrested trends in both directions that have characterized the market during the last couple of months. You can confidently infer that a follow-through to D=3916.75.75 impends if short-covering bears demolish the p=3779.13 resistance Sunday evening.  A one-level pullback thereafter can be used to get long via a 'mechanical' bid, provided you thoroughly understand such set-ups. _______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 9:33 a.m.): Greed got the better of the night shift last night, as it nearly always does, although price action was much nuttier than usual for a Sunday night. It began with a single-bar head-fake on the opening, but it was downhill for the next ten hours. A so-far timid climb began at 5:00 a.m., with predictably low participation. However, all of this did not alter the bullish target, which I am adjusting slightly higher, to 3917.50, nor did it affect the usefulness of the pattern. A one-level pullback will still set up a 'mechanical' buy with a good chance of generating a profit. The overnight low at 3736.50 failed to do this -- i.e., missed the green line (3711.06) -- by 25 points, but a 'sloppy seconds' entry remains viable. Here's a visual summary. _______ UPDATE (Oct 27, 6:07 p.m.): It is bearish that ES missed my 3916 rally target by 20 points, or 0.5%, but remarkable nonetheless that it is holding up fairly well amidst today's FAANG carnage. ES has recouped half of the engineered, after-the-bell downdraft. This is pure distribution sleaze, but it

There's no compelling reason to trust Friday's strong upthrust, but because it was robustly impulsive on the hourly chart, we can't afford to ignore it either.  I'd suggest staking out a tentative long position using the reverse pattern shown. The point 'c' high is just a placeholder at the moment, and you should raise it if the futures make a higher top on Sunday night. Buying should be done at the resulting midpoint Hidden Pivot (currently at 1648.50), using either a stop-loss no wider than 1.00 point, or with an rABC pattern on the lesser bar charts that risks even less theoretically. If you want to paper-trade in order to improve your feel for reverse-pattern set-ups, please note that the conventional stop-loss lie exactly 4.90 points beneath the entry price, predicated on a rally target $10 above it. _______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 12:28 a.m. EDT): A false start and raggedy price action have altered the prospectus for this evening, offering better odds for bottom-fishing D=1646.30 of this pattern than any Hidden Pivot level above it, including the already well-chewed 'p'. ______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 4:56 p.m.): Cancel, the trade, since the futures have been acting like they know D=1646.30 is there. A bullish bias is warranted nonetheless, but price action has been too squirrelly for me to offer day-in-advance trading guidance. _______ UPDATE (Oct 26, 11:53 p.m.): Today's spike to the red line (p=1678.80) confirmed this bullish pattern and its D target at 1736.40. A decisive push past it in the next day or two would shorten the odds that D will be reached.