Rick Ackerman

A pullback to the green line (x=6467.33) would trigger an enticing 'mechanical' buy, notwithstanding the bearish drumbeat of a war with no clear ending. Investors demonstrated on Thursday they don't really care about the headlines, so overwhelmingly eager are they to throw money at stocks. Even a big leap in oil prices elicited hardly a shrug. Although NYMEX crude hit $114 barrel at the intraday peak, up 14%, the E-Mini S&Ps ended the session with a short-covering scramble that left the index up five points on the day. I still believe this is just a bear rally, but its near-term potential is to the 6810.00 target shown in the inset, or even to the 7030.75 Hidden Pivot 'D' of a larger pattern I identified in the chat room. The chart shows how a dip next week could make the short-term picture even more bullish. _______ UPDATE (April 8, 8:15 p.m.): Today's deftly orchestrated, rip-'em-a-new-orifice short- squeeze has cleared the way for an almost certain rally to the 7030.75 target identified above.  Its close proximity to the all-time high at 7097 would turn nearly everyone super-bullish, particularly bears, presumably setting the hook for The Big One following a run-up to marginal new highs. Isn't that what bear rallies are for?

MSFT's dip on the opening to the green line triggered a 'mechanical' buy with the potential to reach 387.92. Bulls were halfway there on Thursday when the stock closed above the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 372.25. If it can do it again on Monday, that would make further progress to the d target all but certain.  I have shown only a portion of the bullish pattern for proprietary reasons, but it is an rABC that meets all my rules.  I still expect the stock to fall eventually to 332.67, which implies that this rally should be shorted aggressively at 387.92, albeit with very tight risk control.

June Gold finished the week with a lackluster performance that nonetheless left intact the bullish pattern shown, with a 5144.00 target. The closing price was about midway along the length of a large range that stretched from 4580 to 4825. That seems excessive and could have pleased no one, but it was not especially bearish even though the futures finished the session with a $114 loss. Looking just ahead, a pullback to the green line (X=4382.40) would trigger an appealing 'mechanical' buy, stop 4128.00.

I've used a pattern similar to the one in the latest Gold tout (see above) to project a rally over the near term to at least 86.105. The previous tout implied the futures would already be there, but I don't recall what I was thinking at the time to suggest that the rally would be so steep. It has already triggered a 'mechanical' buy that paid off with a more than $6 leap. However, if the futures should dip to the green line a second time, I'd suggested taking advantage with a bid there and a 61.20 stop-loss. This implies more than $3000 of initial risk per contract, so a small-pattern trigger is strongly recommended to cut that down by as much as 95%.

Two strong rallies last week improved the look of the daily chart, with a 133.49 target that now looks all but certain to be achieved. Thursday's rigged plunge to an intraday low at 116.13 was quickly recouped, as we might have expected in a healthy bull market. It triggered a 'mechanical' buy at the red line, which confirms the bullish outlook for this ETF, a proxy for the shares of gold exploration companies. If GDXJ were to relapse to the green line (x=110.53), be ready with a bid there and a 102.87 stop-loss.

Did you fade the Dow’s 1100-point rally on Tuesday, or the nearly 500-point follow-through the next day like I told you to? I’d written here a few weeks ago that shorting into strength these days offers the best odds bears have gotten in decades. Stocks had spent four months building an obvious top, and finally, there it was, a precipitously weakening market staring us down just as the U.S. joined Israel in a war against Iran. Usually Wall Street loves nightly footage of an enemy's buildings getting blown to smithereens by F-35s. The fighter jets cost $100 million apiece, and maintenance and operational costs can add another $300 million to that. But this war has another cost, and it's not the 'good' kind: a huge leap in the price of crude oil and natural gas. Investors go to sleep every night praying something will happen soon to ease the situation. It has pushed gas prices as high as $6 a gallon in California and is threatening to send already steep increases in the price of everything else out of control. The graph says Wall Street ought not get its hopes too high for quick relief, since crude looks like it could rise to the sky before quotes settle back to a more normal $70 or so someday. But how will Wall Street react if prices reach the $125-a-barrel target in the graph, or maybe even higher? Actually, buyers have shown unmistakable signs of mental illness, but with a seemingly benign twist. Before Tuesday, the broad averages had lurched both ways on a hair trigger, moving inversely with every blip up or down in the price of crude. But on Tuesday they did something so bizarre that no one could have predicted it. With oil up a few dollars, stocks went

It took the futures several days to get off the launcher following the 'buy' signal noted here a week ago, but by Friday they were on their way to an all but certain rendezvous with the 104.94 target shown. Because investors are obsessed with oil's every move, we can infer that stocks will continue to fall  as energy jitters ratchet higher. The target pattern is very well-formed for reasons I won't go into here, but that means D can be shorted with the tightest possible stop.  Please note that a decisive move through this Hidden Pivot resistance would open a path to as high as 125.48 over the near term, or even to 178.89, a target broached here earlier.

Our week ended with a focus on the bearish, 6328.50 target shown. For reasons that I explained in the chat room, I do not expect this Hidden Pivot support to launch the kind of short squeeze that would put the fear of the lord in the multitudes who by now must be short up to their eyeballs.  However, the pattern is sufficiently clear and compelling, even if somewhat obvious, to deliver a tradeable turn with reasonable precision. As of Friday's close, possible trigger intervals for getting long ranged from 13.00 to 66.25 points, with a middling, third set-up requiring a 28.00 point reversal.  I'll recommend using the 13.00-er, but only with a 'C' low planted in the range 6324.00- 6335.00.  This trade is intended only for subscribers who perfectly understand my instruction. (The tactic is covered in detail in the Hidden Pivot course that is free to most subscribers, including new registrants who recently signed up for a full year.) _______ UPDATE (April 2, 10:51 a.m.):  A Hidden Pivot at 6692.00, about 90 points above, is where I would suggest shorting this bear rally. It is not impregnable, and a rip through it would imply the move is capable of 7030.75. However, I doubt this will happen. Worst case for permabears: a rally to 6780 or so that pulls back to 6522. That would trigger a 'mechanical' buy so juicy that even I would be a buyer.

Microsoft was diddling an important Hidden Pivot support at 355.42 on Friday when bulls were likely saved by the bell. That's because any slippage beneath this 'secondary' support would portend more punishment down to as low as 332.67, the maxed-out 'D' target of the conventional pattern shown. Both numbers have been theoretically in play since mid-February, when  sellers first drove the stock down to the green line (x=400.93).  Because we treat MSFT as our #1 bellwether for the aging bull market, the implications of the stock's easy breach of p=378.18, the midpoint Hidden Pivot, are fraught with significance.  If the stock is going to reverse from here, it will signal it via a booster-stage rally of  7.84 points. However, if the bounce comes off a low beneath 352 (or so), we shouldn't trust it completely. _______ UPDATE (April 1, 10:23): Microsoft is being manipulated higher the old-fashioned way, with short-squeeze gaps on opening bars.  That is why the stock came down so far in the first place, and it will surely do so again, falling to the 332.67 target mentioned above. First, though, it looks likely to achieve will achieve a minimum 387.92 with this short-squeeze rally.  A pullback to 364.42 would trigger a 'mechanical' buy, stop 356.57. (Did you know that the 'Last Price' given above corresponds to the price at which the stock was trading when this update was published?  That is true for all of my updates.)