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Microsoft's deftly engineered short squeeze minutes before the opening bell on Friday slightly exceeded the 516.95 target we'd been using to stay confidently on the right side of a heavily overextended trend. The top was fleeting, volumeless and not just a little sleazy, creating a possible top that could endure for a while. Let's use the green line (x=483.95) as a minimum downside target for now. If it is touched, that would imply more downside to at least p=453.26 (the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot support).

A crucial Hidden Pivot support at 83.53 doesn't look long for this world. Last week's dive came within 66 cents of it, but the bounce so far has been too feeble to suggest the uptrend will continue. But bulls would need to exceed July 10's 'external' peak at 87.05 to give this vehicle a fighting chance. I remain convinced, however, that T-Bonds are not far from a bottom despite the fact that Trump has been doing his utmost to turn them into shit. Perhaps it will take a full-blown recession to turn the tide for Treasurys? There doesn't appear to be one in the offing, but that could change quickly if stocks turn down hard for no apparent reason, as they always do at the onset of a bear market. Trump's daily flip-flops on Powell, however, are bullish for stocks, since he doesn't even have to fire the guy to strengthen the perception that tightening will be impossible on his watch.

I went out on a limb recently with a prediction that T-Bonds had made an important low.  Last week's price action in this ETF was hardly reassuring, however. Not only did it breach a midpoint Hidden Pivot support I'd noted at 85.99, it also generated a bearish impulse leg on the daily chart. Let's give it the slight benefit of the doubt for now, since there are two remaining HP supports to be breached before we throw in the towel. They lie, respectively, at 84.76 (p2) and 83.53 (d).

The pattern shown is ugly-gnarly, but there is no mistaking the power of the rally that pushed it past p=34.75 in early June. This all but clinched more upside to D=41.06 in the weeks ahead. Our best opportunity to get long would be via a bid at 'd' of a reverse pattern. There have been no sufficient pullbacks on the weekly chart to enable this, but the intraday charts will nearly always provide the signal we're  looking for.  Query me in the chat room when appropriate and I may be able to provide timely guidance.

Nvidia became the world's first $4 trillion company last week, leapfrogging Microsoft, Tesla, Google and every other company struggling to stay in the AI game.  Our money is on Musk to compete the hardest. He is Nvidia's biggest customer for their most powerful chips, which sell for as much as $200,000. Musk has been buying them by the tens of thousands. He recently converted a vacuum cleaner factory in Tennessee into a site for the world's largest supercomputer. It draws so much power that the cooling plant alone cost will cost $80 million. The machine will be used to train Grok, Musk's horse in an AI field crowded with corporate strivers. Grok reportedly overtook competitors recently with a demonstration that showed the app capable of thinking almost like a human. Even skeptics were impressed with the way Grok figured out a novel way for hospitals to save power.  What startled them, however, was that Grok hadn't even been asked about this; the AI assistant simply inferred and suggested it based on another, seemingly unrelated, energy solution it had worked on that even MIT-trained engineers hadn't thought of. But even if Nvidia has yet a few more prospective customers in Musk's league, is the company worth $4 trillion?  A physicist friend of mine who uses AI intensively in his business said the stock is only warming up and that NVDA's current price is a certain bet to double yet again. But exactly what will their chip customers sell to the world that could possibly justify such astronomical valuations? It would have to be much more than mere gains in productivity -- or even that old investible standby, a cure for cancer. Monsters from the Id In an earlier commentary, I suggested facetiously that Nvidia and companies immediately downstream of it were

We're all waiting anxiously to see whether Trump's bold initiatives usher in a golden economic era. If this is going to happen, we should see the Dow Industrial lurch toward 100,000 at any time. Just a few short weeks ago, you could have counted me among the skeptics. It is a habit that has become deeply ingrained in me after writing collapsitarian essays and editorials for the last 30 years. However, I have been so wrong about this for so many years that I would never, ever insist that such a seemingly outrageous rally is impossible.  Skeptics aside, there are perhaps 80 to 100 million Americans rooting with all their might for the President to fall on his face. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome at its stupidest and most hateful, since a really bad year for the President could mean our children will have to suffer through a Second Great Depression. The good/bad news is that we should know soon how things are likely to turn out. That's because the stock market is in fly-or-die mode, so dangerously pumped with crazy, Wall Street hype and AI hubris that it cannot possibly sustain altitude unless investors decide to go all-in, and soon.  It would be a peculiar time for stocks to take flight, since U.S. consumers are tapped out and falling increasingly behind on car and house payments, and GDP shrank by 0.4% in the first quarter.  We may have entered a recession, and it has the potential to become a devastating one because, publicly and privately, the nation is so deep in hock. It is not yet so deep, however, that an adroitly engineered bear squeeze could not prevent a potentially fatal, contractionary mindset from taking root. America Ascendant The graph above holds the key to our best hopes and

Last week's nasty short-squeeze stopped just shy of the 6250.38 target I'd drum-rolled, but the selloff that followed quickly reversed an hour before the closing bell. Since Microsoft performed similarly relative to a more quietly disseminated target at 503.69, we should begin the week with at least modest expectations that the stock market has suffered a stroke. However, let's not be too surprised if both vehicles blow past these calculated obstacles, much as they've been doing for years. I strongly doubt this will happen, although staking out a short position will have become more difficult because Friday's top occurred so close to one that only we 'knew' about.  That's debatable, of course, since I myself raised the possibility that every Tom, dick and Harry we compete against has figured out how to 'read' the C-D midpoints of conventional patterns and to trade against them. In any case, if DaBoyz tighten their vise grip on bears' scrota as the new weeks begins, look for the futures to continue on up to at least p2=6469.81. ________ UPDATE (Jul 3, 1:35 a.m. EDT):  Buyers shattered a concrete Hidden Pivot midpoint resistance at 6250.38, clearing a path to at least 6306.25 (60m, A=5993.25 on 6/25, B=6329.00 on 6/27). _______ UPDATE (Jul 3, 2:59 p.m.): The Mother of All Short Squeezes has blown past 6306.25 (see my last update) with such ease that more upside to at least 6429.00 is coming.  That is the 'D' target of a pattern smaller than the one tied to the 6469.81 midpoint Hidden Pivot noted above, but we'll put it out of mind until 6429.00 is achieved and then, presumably, surpassed

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).

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.