Rick Ackerman

Last Wednesday's textbook 'mechanical' buy at x=4120.00 left little doubt where the June contract is headed next. The 'D' target at 4288.75 seems all but certain to be hit early in this four-day week. If it pushes past the Hidden Pivot resistance by more than a couple of points on the first try, you may confidently assume that a new target at 4332.75 is in play. It is derived from the somewhat lower 'A' at 3937.00 recorded on March 24. _______ UPDATE (Jun 2, 9:25 a.m. EDT): The Hidden Pivot target at 4287.75 (a slight correction) still appears certain to be reached. The small delay relative to my forecast occurred because -- manifestly -- too many traders were bullish when the week began. You will have noticed that whatever factors that gave us good reason to be quite bearish are not exactly weighing on the stock market's walnut-size brain at the moment. When DaBoyz fist-pump ES obliviously past 4287.75, you can infer that 4331.50 is the next stop, a slight adjustment from the number given above.

Uber-bellwether AAPL looked poised at the end of last week to take out a 176.52 Hidden Pivot resistance where it stalled a week earlier. A success would propel the stock above a challenging 'external' peak at 176.15 recorded last week and possibly two other earlier peaks, including the record 182.94 from January 2022. A move surpassing that last top would set the stage for AAPL to lead the wilding spree higher when Chipotle and Microsoft shares take a breather.  Advanced Pivoteers should take note of a couple of voodoo opportunities to get short with risk tightly controlled, even if last week's strength spills into this one.

I've displayed a weekly chart because it makes the turgid price action of the last several weeks seem not so much depressing as tedious. Nasty, gratuitous swoons in a bull market that has yet to attract an institutional following are inevitable, but we should always keep in mind that bears do not have the power or the moxie to sustain damage. The June contract could come all the way down to x=1816.60, in fact, and still look fine. That would trigger a succulent 'mechanical' buy, even through the implied $128 fall from here would likely ratchet up despair amongst gold's fair-weather supporters.

Silver has spent the last two weeks creating disappointment, since all the sturm und drang at what might have been a consolidation level turned out to have been distribution. Still more dispiriting was bulls' failure to take on the 27.29 high from March 11. The flaccid performance suggests the current retracement will have farther to go, although I wouldn't lay odds that it will exceed the 'external' low at 20.12 recorded on March 10, let alone C=17.90. The first bottom-fishing opportunity we might see could come at 21.46. That is the D' target on the weekly chart of the reverse pattern using A=25.10 from Feb 3.

GDXJ missed triggering a 'mechanical' buy last week by just 21 cents, but if it follows through to the downside and hits the green line (x=35.59), the trade would be a 'go'. From that point forward you could get long on a buy-stop following any rally of $1.12.  That's how much entry risk you'd be taking per share, but it would be predicated on a potential profit of as much $2.75 per share. You could cut that down to as little as 0.34 per share by triggering yourself into the trade on a rally of at least 35 cents from C or lower, and although taking that approach looks like it has a good chance of producing a profit, it would not necessarily get you to the 45.56 target of the big pattern.

I've struggled to feign interest in crude, since it is hostage to geopolitical forces that taken together do not add up to anything whose meaning could be distilled for predictive purposes. There is scant interest in the chat room in trading this vehicle, although sometimes a subscriber will mention having used an ETF to leverage my targets. There's one at 56.90 that holds little practical value at the moment. Two 'mechanical' shorts performed well in recent months, but it is only on the weekly chart where the pain and sweat required to have made money on these swings is somewhat obscured. I'll keep it on the list because oil is the most important commodity of them all, but you'll need to nudge me if you have a trading idea you'd like vetted.

Microsoft's bullish rampage last week added to already strong evidence that the stock market is headed to new records highs.  The shares of the software leviathan's shares not only jackhammered through granite resistance in the form of the midpoint 'Hidden Pivot' shown in the chart, they ended the week decisively above it. This technical telltale is almost never wrong, as Rick's Picks subscribers could attest. When a stock fist-pumps through the midpoint 'Hidden Pivot' and then stays above it for even a short while, the rally is all but certain to reach the 'D' target -- in this case 430.58. That would equate to a 30% rally from current levels, putting MSFT 80 points above the old all-time high at 349. If the Dow Industrials were to achieve a relatively modest gain of 20% over the same period, they would be trading just shy of 40,000 -- substantially above the record 36,952 achieved in the early days of 2022. Previously, I wrote that similar wilding sprees in Chipotle and AAPL were pointing to the same outcome: new all-time highs for the broad averages. With a third world-beater joining the list, an enticing bet on new all-time highs has become even juicier. This is despite the fact that the radically inverted yield curve the financial system just weathered has never been wrong in predicting a recession. Factor in a collapse in commercial real estate that appears inevitable, as well as a wave of bank failures that even Janet Yellen is expecting, and it would seem that stocks are facing a perfect storm of deflationary forces. So how come your editor, a hard-core bear's bear, thinks stocks are just now lifting from the launching pad?  Very simply, because the market is a rabid beast, inured to all logic, common sense and caution.

The futures ended the week a hair shy of the 4244.00 'internal peak' recorded on February 3.  Hold the applause if buyers should surpass it this week, however, since the 4382.75 peak from August 19 is the one that matters. A rally exceeding it would generate a bullish impulse leg of weekly-chart degree, putting in jeopardy the hopes and dreams of those who think an old-fashioned economic depression would be just the thing to asphyxiate the trivial concerns of wokeness, tame rampant paganism in America, rebuke a hopelessly corrupt political system and provide a reality check for an economic system that runs on debt and helium. Stay tuned to the Trading Room for white-hot trading tips while we're waiting. _____ UPDATE (May 24, 8:54 p.m.): The 'white-hot tip' mentioned above popped up serendipitously during this morning's tutorial session for advanced Pivoteers. It helped us fine-tune a textbook 'mechanical' buy after the futures finished mau-mauing bulls with what we will assume for now was a gratuitous dive. The rally target is the 4287.75 D pivot of this pattern, but we'll sit back for now and let bulls prove their case. ______ UPDATE (May 25, 9:59 a.m.): The selloff that has caused last night's short-squeeze to detumesce is not going anywhere, since the peak of the overnight rally exceeded yesterday's high by two ticks. That makes it impulsive, so expect a rebound. Also, I have corrected the chart accompanying the previous update. 

The rally of the last two weeks has gotten past four small 'external' peaks without taking a breather, so this could be the start of a sustained move. There hasn't been one since earlier this year, but this one looks capable of reaching a minimum 105.85. That's the 'D' target of a reverse pattern begun from 100.82 on February 2. As always, an easy move through a D Hidden Pivot would suggest bulls are not yet finished. Potential thereupon would be to 110.95 (daily chart, A=104.64 on August 10). Gold bulls should take note, since an extended rally in the dollar would put downward pressure on bullion.