The grandaddy of all short squeezes (in dollar terms) stopped an inch shy of the 503.69 target we've been using. It looks like 'our' target got front-run on the intraday charts, but the view shown, of the daily chart, 'feels' like the target will be achieved. In any case, we should be ready to get short there, especially subscribers who have made money on the way up using my crazy-bullish targets. This should be done with a tight stop-loss, preferably tied to a small-pattern ('camouflage') trigger, since we've become used to seeing this stock vaporize Hidden Pivots made from inch-thick titanium. I consider this unlikely, but the pattern itself is probably too obvious to give us our top precisely where we want it. ______ UPDATE (Jul 4, 12:55 p.m. EDT): Some subscribers were able to get long just ahead of the stock's engineered, lunatic leap this morning using a Hidden Pivot correction target I'd disseminated earlier. Visit the chat room for details. ______ UPDATE (Jul 4): Technical signs remain persuasive that the stock will make a potentially important top at or near 503.69, a Hidden Pivot resistance nine months in the making. This warrants laying out shorts at or near the target -- either via purchasing puts when MSFT gets there; or, preferably, naked-shorting soon-to-expire, at-the-money calls with a tight stop-loss. ________ UPDATE July 9, 6:41 p.m. EDT): The Great Microsoft Waft drilled a .50 caliber hole in my Hidden Pivot target before pulling back unconvincingly. The stock is on its way to at least 516.95 over the near-term. It should be bought 'mechanically' on a retracement to x=495.76, stop 488.69, (60m, A=472.51 on 6/23).
This bottom-fishing recommendation in September Yen uses a proprietary set-up that I call a 'mechanical' trade. The implication is that the entry price and subsequent risk-management are determined automatically, as follows: 1) bid at the green line (x=0.68936) following a pullback from between p (the midpoint Hidden Pivot, 0.69683) and p2 (the secondary Hidden Pivot, 0.70429). If the move goes your way, take off half the position on a rally back up to p=0.69683, and another 25% at p2=0.70429. The remaining 25% can be held for at swing at the fence. Since the initial stop-loss just below c=0.68190 implies entry risk of nearly $1000 per contract, I suggest using a small-pattern trigger, with a commensurately small stop-loss, to initiate the trade when x is hit on the pullback. Generally, however, I will recommend these trades only when I think the odds are favorable for cashing out on a move of at least one level (i.e., from x to p). _______ UPDATE (Jul 4): Although the futures made a high above p2=0.70429 last week, my recommendation is unchanged: buy a pullback to the green line (x=0.68936) using a small-interval trigger. _______ UPDATE (Jul 12, 12:46 a.m.): The September contract lies within a hair of stopping out the position detailed above for a $934 loss. If this happens, I will publish a new trade shortly thereafter so that we can move on. _______ UPDATE (Jul 14): A flaccid move lower stopped out the position.
Sellers savaged the 3313.20 midpoint support with such ease last week that the futures are likely to continue down to at least p2=3231.60. And if they fail to get a strong bounce from that Hidden Pivot, expect the correction to hit D=3150.00. An additional possibility is that the turn will come from near the middle of the gap between p and p2, or between p2 and D. Unfortunately, the only way one can trade that scenario with risk tightly controlled is to watch for the turn on a chart of every small (i.e., one- or two-minute) bar chart. And here's one more possible bottom-fishing opportunity for Pivoteers who know how to craft a low-risk trigger: 3253.30, a voodoo number. ________ UPDATE (Jul 2, 1:19 a.m.) The futures opened on a gap down to 3250.50 on Sunday afternoon, triggering a long entry at 3257.60. (The 'reverse' used to fashion the trigger can be found on the 30-min chart, where a=3266.50 on 6/27 at 9:00 a.m.) The pattern, the only one available, could not have produced a losing trade, but it triggered at a time of day when relatively few would have been watching. I have not established a tracking position because no one reported getting long.
The pattern shown is gnarly enough to give us high-confidence trades every step of the way. It has yielded two profitable trades so far: a conventional short from x=36.233, and a so-far moderately profitable long from p=35.695. If sellers smash through p, you can use a reverse-pattern trigger to play a likely continuation down to at least p2=35.158. You can bottom-fish there if reversing a profitable short position; then place a tightly stopped bid down at D=36.620 for an eventual relapse. That would be the most appealing trade of the three proffered herein.
Is this rally for real? We'll probably have our answer this week, since this vehicle will either vault above the 'external' peak at 88.21 (see inset), or it will chicken out and pull back to form a distinctive low before taking a running start. The first scenario would be more bullish, but the second would be no disqualifier. In either case, we'll monitor minor ABCD retracements, since they should not reach 'D' if the rally is going to continue. Correspondingly, ABCD rallies of minor degree should easily surpass p midpoints, and even D targets, for the bull to remain healthy. These rules should hold true even for patterns that play out in an hour or less on the one-minute chart. FYI, the most immediate target for a tradable pullback low is 86.42 (assuming 88.16 is not exceeded first; that would shift the target higher). _______ UPDATE (Jul 2, 1:38 a.m. EDT): Buyers easily surpassed the external peak at 88.21, creating a fresh impulse leg and clearing the way for a new leg up to 88.86. This ETF proxy for long-term Treasurys is rising because foreign money has been flowing copiously into the U.S. Trump has put America into ascendance, and the trend is just getting rolling. It helps that Europe is a basket case.
I've raised the target slightly, to 109,344 to correct a small error in one of my coordinates. If you trade Bitcoin, please know that I am still quite confident the target will be achieved. It also promises to deliver a high-odds short, a trade I am recommending especially to those of you who have made money with my target on the way up. If you do the trade and BTC reverses from our number, be sure to nail down a partial profit on a relatively small move. The remainder of your position can be held for more slippage to 104,191 or even lower. An additional trade possibility using this pattern would be to get long 'mechanically' on a pullback to p=104,191, stop 102,474. _______ UPDATE (Jun 29, 8:57): This is a bloody damned nightmare! Tradestation keeps fiendishly shifting my coordinates, changing not only the targets and Hidden Pivot levels, but also the recommended trades. Each time, I've had to revise not only the text, targets and instructions, but the chart as well. To make matters worse, my laptop has an electrical grounding problem that just erased the most recent revision/update of this tout. I have corrected everything above, including the chart, for the fourth time, so please take note of this. _______ UPDATE (Jun 30, 9:58 a.m. EDT): With a certified IQ of 68, Bitcoin is playing hard to get. You'll have noticed already that this morning's top missed my 109,344 target by a whopping 0.4%. The shortfall denied us an excellent opportunity to get short, but new possibilities are a dime a dozen in this vehicle. The next lies at 106,291, where you can place a 'mechanical' bid, stop 104,680. The midpoint Hidden Pivot, p=107,900, would be a good spot to take a partial profit, but the trade is based
The S&Ps and Nasdaq hit record highs last week, a surreal milestone that only the Wall Street toadies at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal who fabricate the news could take seriously. These are the same folks who bestowed the name 'Magnificent Seven' on a bunch of high-flying stocks whose short-squeeze histrionics qualify them for membership in a stock-market Hall of Shame. Portfolio managers, who surely know better, are go-along buyers at these heights and will remain so until a tsunami of redemptions bends them to the impending reality of massive deflationary write-downs when the Everything Bubble bursts. That reality darkened last week with news that the U.S. economy shrunk at an annualized rate of 0.5 percent in the first quarter. Perennially giddy investors would seem to be betting either that the recession that probably already has begun will be short, or that the statistic itself is a meaningless outlier caused by the world-class uncertainties of Trump's tariff policies. A popular explanation for the staying power of the bull market against a backdrop of global storm clouds, geopolitical mayhem and economic sclerosis is that AI will save us from...everything. As the story has it, artificial intelligence will boost worker productivity, improve outcomes from brain surgery, make steering wheels obsolete, turn $20-an-hour paralegals into Clarence Darrows, and lay to rest the arguments of Talmudic scholars. In unfortunate reality, the driving force behind AI is its ability to put people out of work, particularly white-collar employees whose jobs have been untouched so far by robotics. Can Joe Six-pack Deliver? That raises the question of how lunatic-sector companies that have invested trillions of dollars in AI development, and who say they plan to invest much, much more, can ever hope to recoup their money, let alone multiply it voluminously as they seem to
Right on cue, Bloomberg.com splashed an article on its front page over the weekend explaining why the price of crude has been so subdued in the face of potentially severe supply disruptions in the Middle East. Turns out the world is awash in oil, the article explained — not just because of the success of U.S. fracking, but also because the Saudis have been pumping oil like crazy to stabilize their market share. The article was almost surely planted by Bloomberg’s masters in Washington to calm the herd. Energy markets are very heavily manipulated, and PR is frequently used to nudge quotes one way or the other, ostensibly “in the national interest.” Capping prices would appear to be a high priority at the moment, superseding the $100-a-barrel needs of traders and speculators who thrive on volatility. But who is kidding whom? Just beneath the veneer of eerie, artificial calm lurks enough pent-up panic to push quotes from a current $72 to $100 literally overnight. That’s why I’m sticking with a forecast from a week ago that August Crude will hit a minimum $86. In the meantime, don’t be lulled by the way bulls were rebuked this morning with a so-far $8 reversal from 78. Too many things could go wrong for oil prices to be this docile, and for stocks to be hovering so close to record highs. Only fools are buyers of shares at these levels. _______ ADDENDUM (1:25 p.m. EDT): Sunday evening's fleeting spike, noted above, came within three cents (0.03) of the 78.37 rally target I had flagged in the earlier tout as a good bet. If you took that bet and then got short at the target with a stop-loss as tight as a nickel, you could have caught an up-and-down ride worth as much as
A subscriber posted the bullish pattern shown (see inset) in the chat room on Friday, and although I wasn't enthused about it at the time, I now like it more than the alternative I went on to suggest. It shows two possibilities of a bear market developing without a new record high in the S&Ps. The first implies the futures will fall from current levels, even though they've triggered a theoretical buy signal at the green line (x=6030.94). The second allows for a rally to the 6250.38 midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance, just shy of last winter's multiple peaks near 6280. I've been operating under the assumption that the huge move off April's low was a bear rally, a sucker's bet destined to sputter out beneath the old high. I still consider this likely, although less so if the September contract should achieve p=6250.38. It won't make much difference in the way we trade this vehicle, and a tightly stopped short at p will be warranted in any event. A third possibility -- a move to new record highs -- would only increase my skepticism and make me more bearish.
I've been quietly promoting a 486.17 target as a place to get short, and although I am still recommending that you attempt it with a very tight stop-loss, I am no longer as enthused. It was based on a variant of my favorite pattern, a 'quickie' ABC followed by a long, dragged-out C-D leg. In this case, I ignored a visually compelling ABC whose 477 target had already been exceeded to favor a bastardized pattern with a still unfulfilled target. The change has forced me to the big, bullish pattern shown, with a target at 503.69. The pattern looks much too obvious to work precisely, but the gap through p=424.24 still all but guarantees that D will be reached, at least. If it doesn't stop the rally precisely, it will surely impose a formidable obstacle, and possibly a fatal one. This is important to consider, since a major top in MSFT would mark the start of a bear market for stocks in general. _______ UPDATE (Jun 23, 3:14 p.m. EDT): The stock has made a so-far high today at 487.75, somewhat above my target. See the chat room discussion for explicit instruction on getting short. ______ UPDATE (Jun 24, 9:40 a.m. EDT): The short triggered around 7:10 a.m. this morning when the stock dropped from an off-hours high at 492.00 to 489.26. A drop of an additional 2.74 (equal to the suggested trigger interval) dictated profit-tsking at 486.53. The trade is still 'live', with a break-even-or-better stop-loss on the remaining 50% of the position. The downside target is 481.06, where most (although not all) of the position that is left is to be covered. _______ UPDATE (Jun 25, 1:19 p.m. EDT): Check my post in the chat room just now for a tradable update.
