Although sellers finally hit, and then pulped, the recalcitrant 4245 target, I've used a visually obvious and conservative 'reverse' pattern (inset) to project at least moderate additional downside over the near term to D=4129.26. The pattern looks enticing for 'mechanical' shorting on the way down, but p2=4178.81 would be a worthwhile spot nonetheless to attempt scalping what could prove to be a fleetingly tradeable low. If the HP levels give way easily, however, suggesting the correction will be nastier than some might expect, we'll shift our sights to this larger rABC, where D=3775.50. That would be a major breakdown, but you still shouldn't pass up a chance to play for a bounce, even if 'against the box' with options, at p=4051.50. That well-hidden support would become my minimum downside projection if 4129.26 gives way easily. ______ UPDATE (Aug 22, 8:54 p.m.): The futures plunged to within an ansgstrom of the 4129.26 target I'd flagged as my minimum. What's next? Reply hazy, try again later. _______ UPDATE (Aug 24, 6:56 p.m.): Here's a modest rally target at 4189.25 you can use for now. Notice how Mr Market cheated 'mechanical' bids at the green line out of an easy winner. Don't expect more kindness if the trade sets up a second time. ______ UPDATE (Aug 25, 11:02): ES is moving with high predictability, having topped in the dead of night just beneath my 4189.25 target. Then, as expected of Mr Market, following a sharp pullback from the 'mechanical'-trade sweet spot, ES trampolined from a few points above x to deny easy entry for a second time. It doesn't know we are there, it just comes naturally.
DaBoyz must have meant to perform the same sleazy trick they do two or three times a week, particularly on Fridays, letting AAPL fall on the opening to exhaust supply for a planned short squeeze. However, they evidently misjudged sellers' eagerness and wound up creating a quite robust impulse leg that surpassed no fewer than four prior lows, two of them 'external'. This implies the decline will continue to at least D=169.77 or perhaps lower for a more significant correction. AAPL lost Friday's mild tug of war with indexes that had wanted to fall harder, but now they can and probably will. The pattern looks ripe for 'mechanical' shorting, most favorably on a bounce to the green line, however unlikely. either Sunday night or in the early going on Monday.
The dollar's feisty move last week past p=107.46 has all but guaranteed more upside to the D target at 110.27 over the next 5-7 days. Don't miss an opportunity to get long 'mechanically' on an unexpected swoon to x=106.06. The rally has also shortened the odds of a further leap to the 113.16 target of this compelling, far larger pattern on the weekly chart, one you've seen before. Although I've expected the bull market to test highs near 120 for many years, a substantial correction from 113.16 seems likely first. ______ UPDATE (Sep 8, 10:45 p.m.): DXY is correcting hard after topping a half-point above the 110.27 Hidden Pivot target noted in the original tout. Now let's see if the ''D' retracement target at 108.78 holds. It looks certain to be reached.
There is too much angst in the weekly chart, including the May/June destruction of big D=116.06, to offer much hope that the long-dated bond's two-year agony is about to end. For now, I will allow but two bullish possibilities: 1) a bounce from the 109.07 'd' target of this reverse pattern. It's more than a slim reed, however, and therefore worth bottom-fishing, but don't count too heavily on a major reversal; and then there is below it 2) a 'voodoo' number at 106.54 that could could also provide a tradeable bounce off a 'reverse' pattern with a 'c' low anchored at that price.
September Crude's balky descent is still targeted most immediately on D=78.73, which if achieved would probably correspond to pump prices below $3 gallon. The felicity of this might not last, given that the largest commodity market on earth has become just another carny crap shoot made so opaque by refiners and cartels that even the Houston Chronicle's intrepid energy reporters can't quite explain how the rip-off works. The pattern is certainly tradeable even if the daily-chart version of it has yet to yield a 'mechanical' short. Exploiting it profitably will take some 'camouflage' and elbow grease -- on your brain, that is -- provided you've got the chops to rein in entry risk to no more than around $180 per contract. _______ UPDATE (Aug 23, 6:30 p.m.): The October contract appears headed toward a 'voodoo' level at around 97.50 whence a potentially tradeable turn could come. This would NOT be an actual reversal point, just a place to anchor an rABC set-up.
I've scaled back my pattern and rally target to reflect gold's disppointing performance over the last two weeks, The impulse leg was a dubious qualifier to begin with, and the follow-through leg couldn't even reach p2=1841.30, let alone re-energize itself with a push above an 'external' peak. That said, the pattern could still generate a so-so 'mechanical' buy at x=1744.60 for a one-level ride to p=1792.90. If you elect the trade, just be sure to use a 'camouflage' set-up on a small-degree chart to cut the nearly $10,000 of implied entry risk on four contratcs down to more like $800. The 1889.70 target is a longshot at this point, never mind the 1985.40 target of the larger 'reverse' pattern shown here earlier.
The soul-sucking correction from the August 2020 high at 65.95 has had no fewer than five false starts, stopping out bulls at prior lows each time. This has been dispiriting to the point of despair, although it has yet to negate the bullish implications of the spectacular impulse lag that bucked up our spirits in the first place. It exceeded two valid 'external' peaks, making it very difficult for Mr Market at his nastiest and most determined to wreck the pattern by stopping out the 'C' low at 19.52. How far he will go trying to screw bulls is not predictable with any great confidence right now, but the best possibility I can foresee would be an upturn from 31.13, a 'voodoo' level'; and the worst, from the D target at 25.35 tied to A=51.92 on April 18. _______ UPDATE (Sep 8, 10:51 p.m.): Today's feisty rally created a bullish pattern on the hourly chart that points as high as 31.05 over the near term. First, though, bulls will need to blast through p=30.18. The pattern looks quite serviceable for 'mechanical' buying on the way up, provided Mr Market gifts us with the punitive retracement needed to make this possible.
No fewer than six times have bulls gotten trapped on fake rallies since early July, and so they've finally given up. Friday's breakdown implies the Sep Micro Bitcoin futures are now bound for a minimum 18.875. Trade this target with a bearish bias until the midpoint Hidden Pivot support is touched, then reverse the position using a 'camo' trigger on the 15-minute chart or less. A one-level move would be worth about $800/contract. If there is sufficient interest in the chat room if and when the trade approaches, I'll furnish coordinates for doing this in real time. The switch from $BRTI to a vehicle that is actually tradeable rather than a prixy is intended to revive chat room interest in it. ______ UPDATE (Aug 24, 7:04 p.m.): A subscriber mentioned that each trade in this vehicle generates a rip-off commission of $7. Since there appears to be no respectable proxy to trade bitcoin, I'll be thrilled to drop it from the list entirely. Someone suggested BITO, but there are gaps all over the chart, since it only trades during regular hours. For all the global blather and hubris, including by the banks, a good way to trade cryptos was never established. What does that say?
Call it a recession or anything else you prefer, but the bottom line is that the prosperity of decades past is not coming back. Thinking expansively about the economy is no longer part of the American mindset, since, as should be perfectly clear to everyone by now, the Fed's epic, easy-credit hoax can do little but inflate asset values to the point of collapse. We are nearly there now, even accepting that the U.S stock market, afflicted by mass psychosis, will remain capable for a while of staging one last, fatally deceptive hurrah to make certain everyone is aboard for the crash that ends two generations of economic madness. We can no longer delude ourselves into thinking the statistics pushed at us by Biden, but also by his predecessors, portend better times. Least meaningful of all, but still greeted with spin, hubris and a raucous burlesque of feigned nervousness on Wall Steet, are employment figures that would suggest the economy is producing plenty of jobs. But what kind of jobs, and for whom? Leave it to my friend and colleague Charles Hugh Smith, one of the most insightful thinkers in the blogosphere, to tell it like it is: The picture is quite despairing, he avers. Not necessarily for you and me as individuals, though, since each of us in theory has the wherewithal to plan for dealing with the worst of times. For him personally, that means not merely hunkering down with a perhaps overly optimistic Plan B, but with a rigorously plotted Plan C to make him as self-sufficient as possible when an energy-dependent food network has made it extremely difficult for people living in heavily urbanized areas to feed themselves and keep warm. Accordingly, he has also scaled back energy use in and around his home in Hawaii,
More pain is coming, since the July 15 low at 18.17 generated the first impulse leg we've seen on the weekly chart since this interminable correction began exactly a year ago. The low breached the distant, look-to-the-left external from last June by only a hair, but that's enough to allow the presumption that the C-D follow-through leg will have its way. It should reach p=18.53 at least, a midpoint Hidden Pivot that can be bottom-fished with the usual precautions. But if the support gets splattered, look for more downside to p2=17.37, or even D=16.22 in the Sep-Oct period.
