Rick Ackerman

Last week's strong start laid an egg as expected, leaving yet more paint to dry on an indisputably bullish picture. The constipated price action cries out for a swoon beneath the three lows near 2330 that have occurred since April just to clear the air.  We'd be 'voodoo' buyers down near 2351 in any case, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking the futures would do us such a kindness.  In the meantime, they remain tradable on intraday signals that have been plentiful, even in bullion's increasingly tedious holding pattern. Stay tuned to the chat room if you care.

Subscribers evidently made hay with a 27.41 correction target I'd flagged here that caught the low of a nearly $2 bounce within four cents. So now what? The bounce wasn't quite sufficient to generate an impulse leg on the daily chart, so any trading opportunities in either direction will necessarily come from the intraday charts. My hunch is that a next buy signal will materialize with a dip into the 'discomfort' zone bounded by prior lows at, respectively, 27.45 (7/29) and 26.55 (5/2). ______ UPDATE (Aug 9, 1:50 p.m.): Another bullseye: Last week's low at 26.505 occurred in the exact middle of the range I'd flagged above. Spartacus was the only subscriber to mention this, but please let me know in the chat room if you used the forecast (as he evidently did) to get long near the bottom. If I hear from enough of you, I will establish a tracking position. ______ UPDATE (Aug 11, 2:25 a.m.): Assuming you are long four contracts from around 26.51, take profits on half at 27.80, then deploy an 'impulsive' stop-loss on the 30-minute chart. This implies stopping yourself out of the remainder of the position if a plunge exceeds two prior lows without an upward correction. At the moment, this would locate the stop-loss at 26.970, just beneath the 'external' low recorded on August 8 at 9:30 a.m. EDT. Make this order o-c-o with a single-contract offered to close at 28.610. _______ UPDATE (Aug 12, 1:59 p.m. EDT): Profit-taking has lowered our cost basis to 25.22 for the two contracts that remain. Continue to offer one of them to close at 28.61, tying both to an o-c-o stop-loss at 27.280. ______ UPDATE (Aug 14, 2:33 a.m. EDT): Raise the stop-loss to 27.50. _______ UPDATE (Aug 15, 3:24 a.m.): Subscribers who exited on the stop suggested above

Unlike silver futures, GDXJ has a little farther to go to complete the corrective pattern from the 49.11 high recorded on July 16. An overshoot would raise the possibility of a further correction into the range 40-41, where some important lows were recorded over the last three months. We'll be on edge if this scenario should come to pass, since a breach of the lows would portend additional slippage to around 36, or even to 32. _______ UPDATE (Aug 6, 10:35 a.m.): The week opened with a plunge down to 40.26, squarely within the predicted range. However, the breach of d=42.78 on the way down suggests that more weakness and a test of the low lies ahead.  It would take a thrust exceeding July 31's external peak at 46.32 to put bulls back in charge.

September Crude loitered for four days at a 76.26 Hidden Pivot correction target identified here earlier, then crushed it with a running dive that followed a vicious head-fake. The subsequent low occurred almost precisely at the too-obvious trendline shown. Since every oil trader in the galaxy will have used this feature to bottom-fish, it is unlikely to work precisely. However, sellers are going to have difficulty turning such a compelling 'structural' support to mush, so look for oil's so-far 12% slide to end hereabouts. _______ UPDATE (Aug 5, 12:35 p.m.): The slide did not end at the support. Is oil perhaps discounting the possibility that the stock market's plunge has set in motion an economic collapse?

The futures bounced last Thursday from within a hair of the green line (x=5421.21), triggering a textbook 'mechanical' buy within a very un-textbook ABCD pattern. It's a credible signal, however, given the initial hesitation at the red line on the way up, and the stall precisely at p2=5728.14.  Even so, I am wary of the possibility that this so-far moderate bounce will fail to achieve the D target at 5881.60, effectively ending the bull market begun in 2009. The September contract is a lead-pipe cinch to reach p, though, so we'll put further speculation aside and focus on trading the remaining 75 points of 'ceertain' upside.

The 435 'd' target of the reverse pattern shown looks too compelling for the stock to have crushed it effortlessly. It did, though, signaling the likely failure of the next rally to achieve  new record highs. Even if it did, I'd treat the breakout as a phony and lay in a store of put options that correlate with a sell signal on a chart of lesser degree (aka 'camouflage'). Let's first see whether the stock is able to push past the 'external' peak at 446.96 recorded last week on the way down.

While the broad averages were getting pounded last week, bitcoin's deft handlers were displaying the kind of brash confidence that all but guarantees significantly higher prices -- and soon, especially if stocks continue to recover. Use p=71,394 as a minimum upside projection for the near term, and expect this hoax to punch through this Hidden Pivot with little difficulty. That would shorten the odds of a finishsing stroke to the 89,029 target flagged here earlier.

The futures rallied nearly $40 last week from within a dime of the target provided here a few days earlier. This has not made me especially bullish, however, even if I am open to the possibility the rally will achieve new highs without requiring five to eight weeks to recharge, as has been the case since April. That scenario would become more like if the October contract lunatics above the external peak at 2456.70 recordeed last Wednesday on the way down. Until such time as that occurs, be alert to the possibility of a punitive relapse.

September Silver took a tentative bounce from the launcher last Thursday, but it will need to close above the pink line at 28.82 to be considered airborne. The reverse pattern shown is both compelling and obscure, so d=27.41 stood to work precisely. Is the reversal from 14 cents above that Hidden Pivot sufficiently precise to infer the downtrend is spent? Probably. But if the futures relapse this week, be ready to bottom-fish voodoo 27.05 with a trigger interval as tight as a dime. ______ UPDATE (Jul 29, 6:13 p.m.): The futures relapsed, all right, but only enough to get them even closer to my 27.41 target. Is the new low at 27.45 close enough?  The question is no longer worth pondering, but you should be long if you used the suggested trigger interval, with a partial profit from the 60-cent move that has occurred so far.