Rick Ackerman

Although the stock has continued to noodle around near a very major target at 430.84, I'm going to focus on the minor pattern shown, with a 439.35 target. It is clear, compelling -- and entirely likely to be reached, given Thursday's gap up through p=426.07. A pullback to x=419.43 should be bought 'mechanically', and you can also get short at the target if you've held a profitable position on the way up. For now, we'll pretend the 430.84 target doesn't exist.

I don't usually overlay a second pattern on a chart, but in this case my intention was to show how the May futures can be bought at 79.81 for a shot at D=88.69. This is a reverse-pattern set-up, and it can be done with a limit bid and a tight stop-loss, but also with a 'camouflage' trigger on a lesser chart that would limit risk even more.  Use extra caution, since it wouldn't take much drama Sunday night to open the futures below d=79.81 of the rABC pattern. If tat happens, a larger reverse-pattern a-b will be in play: a= 78.80 on 1/29/24. It yields a 'd' target at 75.90 that would be the maximum correction from the recent high at 83.18. The target coincides with a voodoo number, so it would be a back-up-the-truck opportunity to get long. The large pattern would be confirmed and corroborated by a bounce precisely from 79.54, the midpoint HP support. Do not share this information with anyone, since that could queer the ABCD/abcd patterns' hidden power over the futures.

The bullish pattern shown is somewhat gnarly, but there's nothing fancy about it, and there is no reason to think the 2306.20 target, which first appeared here a while ago, will not be reached. It should be held in mind as a minimum upside projection for the near term. A mechanical buy now at the red line is problematical, however, since the uptrend failed to touch p2 before it pulled back to the line. I doubt the correction will continue all the way down to the green line (x=2073.90), but that would  certainly present an appealing 'mechanical' buying opportunity.

Silver continues to look like a bull with Mad Cow's disease as it makes its way in tortuous fashion to the 27.34 rally target we've been using for the last several weeks.  Friday's dirge tripped a 'mechanical' buy at the red line (p=24.76). but like gold, it failed to reach p2=26.905 before pulling back. The stop-loss would be at 23.90, and I think the trade will work. However, I am not recommending it officially because the set-up is not strictly kosher.

Last week's peak missed the 37.15 target of the pattern shown by 27 cents. This is but a minor concern at the moment, but the shortfall is sufficient to suggest bulls were either a little tired or less than true believers. Regardless, because it took more than four months for the pattern to play out, GDXJ is due for a breather of perhaps 8–12 days. If it lurches higher within the next few days, however, and closes above D=38.15 for two consecutive days, that would imply bulls are again ready to rumble,

A 'mechanical' buy at the green line returned a theoretical profit on Friday when the dollar jumped to the red line (p=204.50). This is of no trading consequence, since we don't actually take positions in  this vehicle, but it lends a touch of health to the overall appearance of the daily chart. The moderate presumption now is that the rally will continue to at least p2=106.44, and possibly event to D=108.38. Let's see whether bulls can push DXY past the midpoint resistance with vigor, since that would bull up the chart even more.

The Fed's main job supposedly is to manage our expectations. But have Powell & Co. painted themselves into a corner? At the moment, it would appear that investors have no clue what to expect from the Fed. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except that their default mode has been to push stocks with multitrillion dollar capitalizations into unsustainably steep rallies. This trend is growing more dangerous and delusional by the week, and even a slight feint toward monetary clarity by policymakers could pop the bubble, turning an economic boom quickly into a global downturn. Meanwhile, the Fed's credibility suffers every time they suggest inflation is mellowing. What their hemming and hawing suggest in reality is that no one on the Open Market Committee has bought gas or groceries in a long time. Stocks have been in an unnaturally steep climb since October, and no one would be surprised to see it end.  Yeah, you've heard that before. But we'll continue to serve up bear market porn anyway because the bullish case is too stupid and boring to write about. However bullish you might be, let's face it: Stocks do not remotely deserve to be trading at these levels, and only an imbecile or someone paid to lie about it would argue otherwise. Lunatic Sector So how soon might we expect the market to go into a hellish dive? The chart above suggests the S&P Index could make an important top just 2.6% above these levels. We like the target because there is so little drama in the chart pattern that produced it. However, before we infer that the end is nigh, we need to put aside the fact that some key stocks in the lunatic sector -- specifically Microsoft, Nvidia and Facebook -- have already topped within a

The futures are topping here, since D=5220.00 is too compelling a Hidden Pivot resistance to simply give way.  The fact that the topping process has entered its third, tedious week is evidence not of the bull's tenacity, but rather of the herd's discovery of "our" pattern and target. Even with the sketchy filigree that characterizes the A-B leg, the pattern is still far from gnarly, and therefore overexposed.  We can short the futures or use SPY options to leverage the impending plunge, so stay tuned to the chat room and let your interest be known if you care. _______ UPDATE (Mar 18, 4:21 p.m.): The so-far high of what I still believe to be a topping process was 5257, recorded on March 8. However, stocks look primed for an explosive leap on whatever Fed 'news' comes tomorrow, regardless of whether the pronouncement is ostensibly bullish or bearish. I'll be interested to see what the usual dirtbags and scoundrels make of this opportunity, but we shouldn't be surprised if they are able to goose the futures 50-80 points above our 5220 target. _______ UPDATE (Mar 21, 9:04 a.m.): Based on the way buyers impaled p=5276, this short-squeeze blowoff will hit a minimum 5396.25, the Hidden Pivot target of the pattern shown. Any long entered at a lower price will make money, and the pattern is gnarly enough to imply that a short at the target will work, too.

Although AAPL precisely fulfilled a longstanding target at 430.54 on the weekly chart on Friday, the rally still has a ways to go before it achieves an 'extension' target at 456.88 that comes from the C-D leg of the larger pattern. This is how we deal with rallies when they exceed big-picture targets, and the smaller segment should be judged on its own merits without much regard to  -- in this case -- MSFT's weekly chart. That implies 456.88 is very likely to be achieved, and precisely, given price action at p. The initial stall there confirmed the legitimacy of the pattern itself, while the easy penetration of p=383 six weeks later strongly implied the rally would continue to D. ________ UPDATE (Mar 21, 10:24 a.m.): However compelling the long-term target at 430.54 might seem, the 439.35 target shown in this short-term picture takes precedence at the moment, since the explosive move past p implies D=439.35 is all but certain to be reached.