I am on holiday for a short while, far from Florida's disabling seasonal heat and enjoying what so far has been the coolest, foggiest summer anyone who lives in San Francisco can remember. This is a busman's holiday, since I am updating the actionable 'touts' on this page 24/7 and have been fully engaged in the chat room as always, providing timely ideas whenever unusual opportunities arise and answering all questions related to trading. I am also continuing to put out actionable guidance at GoldenMeadow.eu. However, in this space, instead of the usual weekly commentary and graphics, I am presenting a changing selection of paintings by Geoffrey Leckie, my college roommate during our third year at the University of Virginia. His canvases are beautiful and extraordinary (above: Stacking Hay, a scene from Connemara, Ireland), and they can speak for themselves. If you want to know more about the artist, click here. Expect 'Something Big' Concerning the stock market, I've come to expect unusual craziness every time I take an extended holiday. Although my hunch until recently was that the nuttiness would take the form of a melt-up, last week's weakness, especially in Bitcoin, has caused me to reconsider. Although Trump's accomplishments have driven the bull market to new heights, the feel-good energy they created may be spent. For that reason, I have lowered the odds of a thousand-point rally in the S&Ps to 50-50. Correspondingly, I will be more cautious at these heights, since the bear market that's coming will be at least as destructive to the economy as the 1929 Crash.
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MSFT – Microsoft (Last:507.23)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks
My outlook is still bullish, with a 593.73 target in play that was introduced here last week. This chart offers a different view, however -- one that suggests the stock would become an opportune buy when the correction comes down to p=493.67, the midpoint Hidden Pivot of a pattern I've cloaked for proprietary reasons. You should use a trigger interval taken from the hourly to initiate the trade, but it cannot be calculated accurately until the stock is close to p. As of now, it looks like $2.08 TI should do the trick, but a more timely calculation could help to reduce that number. As always, a decisive breach of the midpoint support would shorten the odds of more slippage to the 'd' target -- in this case 431.89.
SIU25 – Sep Silver (Last:41.071)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks
The reverse pattern shown stops short of greenlighting a rally into the void, although it says that a move to at least d=39.865 is practically certain. Move the point 'A' to a visually more obvious place, one low to the left, and it projects a higher 'D' target at 40.605. I am not skeptical that it will be reached, but I'll be curious to see how such an obvious pattern screws with bulls' heads. Our short-term trading bias will remain bullish in any case, but I'd suggest negotiating your entries at p or d pivots of rABC patterns on the hourly chart or less. --______ UPDATE (Aug 31, 1:54 p.m.): Silver lurched on Friday to within inches of the 40.605 target flagged above. This Hidden Pivot resistance is all but certain to show stopping power, presumably tradable and possibly precise, but let's wait and see how buyers actually interact with it before we reassess the strength of the bull trend. ________ UPDATE (Sep 2, 1:42 p.m.): Sliding 'A' down to 32.100 (May 15) yields a new minimum objective at p2= 42.138, or D=44.090 if any higher.
GDXJ – Junior Gold Miner ETF (Last:70.28)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's PicksCareful! GDXJ's behavior has been feral the whole way up, albeit with no big surprises. Now it is closing on a 78.28 target that has been three months in coming. That implies the target, a Hidden Pivot, should show tradable stopping power, even if the blunt obviousness of the pattern will likely work against a top occurring precisely where it ought to. If you've held onto a long position all the way up and want to keep it, or part of it, consider writing some near-the-money calls with an expiration date no more than 2-3 weeks out.
Your Editor Is Taking a Breather
– Posted in: Free The Morning LineI will be on holiday for a short while, far from Florida's disabling seasonal heat and eager to enjoy what so far has been the coolest, foggiest summer anyone who lives in San Francisco can remember. This will be a busman's holiday, since I plan to update the actionable 'touts' on this page 24/7 and to remain fully engaged in the chat room as always, providing timely ideas whenever unusual opportunities arise, and answering all questions related to trading. I will also continue to put out actionable guidance at GoldenMeadow.eu. However, in this space, instead of the usual weekly commentary and graphics, I will present a changing selection of paintings by Geoffrey Leckie, my college roommate during our third year at the University of Virginia. His canvases are beautiful and extraordinary (see above), and can speak for themselves. If you want to know more about the artist, click here. Expect a Melt-Up Concerning the stock market, it would not be unusual for it to go nuts while I'm away from my desk for an extended period. If so, expect the direction of the craziness to be UP. I am on record with a prediction that the S&Ps are about to stage a thousand-point rally. A crash will follow, but I doubt it will happen before late October.
Trump Must Outrun the Inevitable Bear Market
– Posted in: Free The Morning LineTrump looks like a hero now, but he could become a goat when the bull market ends. He campaigned as the man who would make America great again, and no one should doubt the sincerity of this quest or his commitment to returning the nation to its core values. To judge from his accomplishments so far, he is up to the task. Few could have imagined he would crush the entrenched woke movement and hamstring Deep State within less than a year of taking office. If he can finish the job by bringing criminal charges against Obama, Hillary Clinton, Comey, Clapper, Brennan et al., and make the charges stick, his presidency would become one for the ages. But odds are considerably less favorable that he will be able to prevent the stock market and the U.S. economy from imploding under the weight of public debts grown far too large to repay. They include $37 trillion owed by the U.S. Treasury, as well as the financial liabilities of at least two dozen states, led by the breathtakingly reckless Illinois, whose pension system, along with many others, is just a bear market away from failure. The sums involved are much too big for a taxpayer bailout, and when they are ultimately deflated to zero by bankruptcies, the result will distance America more than ever from greatness. Many Jobs -- for Robots Trump's plan is to ignite economic growth robust enough to make public debts manageable and homes more affordable. But the way he is going about it, with a surge in deficit spending and a Federal Reserve Board hand-picked to turbocharge an already overheated financial system, will only add more IOUs to the mountainous pile that already exists. Although there will eventually be offsets from tariff collections and the re-shoring of U.S.
ESU25 – Sep E-Mini S&Ps (Last:6471.50)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks
As a hard-core permabear, I find this chart painful to contemplate. It says a thousand-point rally is coming in the S&Ps and that nothing, not even an October surprise, can derail it. This conclusion is related to the way in which buyers penetrated the midpoint Hidden Pivot support at 6165.88. Not only did they slice through it on the first try, they then closed above it for three consecutive bars and never looked back. The pattern itself is too obvious to yield a penny-precise top to short, but there is no mistaking the power that made such short work of p=6165.88. As many subscribers will already know, price action at the midpoint pivot is a reliable telltale even when the underlying pattern is less-than-appealing, never mind perfect. In this instance, there is also the prospect of a back-up-the-truck bottom-fishing opportunity if the futures relapse to the green line (x=5498.94). Although the implied plunge of nearly a thousand points would be widely viewed as the start of a bear market, it would be an exceptional opportunity to reload, as far as we're concerned.
SIU25 – Sep Silver (Last:38.020)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks
I'd said the weekly chart shown could serve as a road map for the next couple of weeks, and that is still the case. This is notwithstanding the fact that the dipsy-doodle of the last two weeks did not quite come down to the 35.946 midpoint Hidden Pivot support where we'd intended to do some buying. The pivot is sill valid for bottom-fishing, although the failure of sellers to push the September contract down to it is bullish enough to suggest that the 'c' high (39.910) is a slightly less than even bet to get exceeded. The best way to get ahead of the action is to follow it on the hourly chart. Here it is, and it implies the first place we might attempt tightly stopped bottom-fishing would be at p=37.770. I have masked the 'a' and 'b' coordinates for proprietary reasons, but you can figure them out by working backward from the target. ______ UPDATE (Aug 16, 2:36 p.m.): It's no fun playing to an empty house, so let's hear some applause from those of you who bought down at 37.770 as I'd explicitly advised. Here's how the chart linked above evolved, producing a theoretical profit so far of $1,400 per contract.
GDXJ – Junior Gold Miner ETF (Last:72.23)
– Posted in: Current Touts Free Rick's Picks
This proxy for gold exploration stocks has had quite a run-up this year. Most recently it exceeded a 72.23 target first disseminated here a long time ago. To come up with a higher projection, I had to shift the point 'A' low from 2020's watershed bottom at 19.62 to the 16.87 low recorded in January 2016. This allows GDXJ a little more running room, but not much. The pattern is extremely gnarly, but it is also the only logical extension possible. That is why you should pay close heed if the uptrend continues into August.
AAPL Back Again as an Engine of Illusory Wealth
– Posted in: Free The Morning LineYou've got to hand it to DaBoyz for reviving Apple as a 'wealth'-effect dynamo. The company couldn't innovate its way out of a wet paper bag, and it doesn't even have a horse in the AI race. And yet, the stock recently lurched back to life, emulating those two bull-market superstars, Microsoft and Nvidia. Indeed, any investor who held shares in the company last week, including Vanguard, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway and approximately 25,000 other lucky investors, became significantly wealthier on paper without lifting a finger. Rising sharply on gap openings last Wednesday and Thursday (see chart), and on a nasty short-squeeze Friday for good measure, the Cupertino-based seller of iPhones added nearly $500 billion to the world's store of illusory wealth. The Element of Surprise As I've explained here before, almost no stock changes hands on gap openings, and what little actual buying occurs comes almost entirely from short covering. In this instance, AAPL ended last Tuesday's session at around $203 per share. Then news came out after the close that they had sold quite a few more iPhones than benighted analysts had expected. It didn't matter that the flurry of phone-buying could have been a one-time effect caused by consumers trying to get ahead of new tariffs. All that was needed to goose AAPL skyward was the element of surprise. After the earnings beat, the stock's clever handlers lost no time working their levitation scam. By simply pulling their offers overnight and on Wednesday's opening, they enabled panicked bears to do all the lifting into a supply vacuum. Rotation Is Costless It's easy to underestimate the crooks who ply this game. Although we know they routinely rotate money from one sector to the next to push stocks higher with relatively small outlays, we sometimes overlook that they can top