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Last week's nasty chop barely recovered ground lost as the week began, when GDXJ's canny handlers orchestrated a $17 shakedown on Monday's opening. This was bullish, like all shakedowns, because its purpose was to scare widows and pensioners into selling their shares for relative bargain prices. The subsequent bounce triggered a 'mechanical' short when it reached the green line (x=93.97), but the flat price action that followed looked unpromising as a place to bet the 'don't' line. Stay tuned for updates as GDXJ gives us a clearer picture. You can do this by enabling notifications in your account dashboard and by checking the chat room regularly.

TLT continues to grind higher, perhaps to deny skeptics the inspiration they need to climb aboard early in this bull market.  It is still in its adolescence, too early to predict which tectonic financial event(s) it is signaling. The trend flouts Trump's persistent efforts to cheapen the dollar, if not to say trash it.  This is a paradox that I've explained here before, to wit: the president's bold leadership has been attracting hordes of T-Bond buyers from around the world, providing an offset to the fiscal and credit excesses Trump believes will lift the U.S. economy.  Grotesquely inflated asset prices belie the fact that, for most Americans, the economy has slipped into a deep, intractable recession.  For the lucky winners, a debt deflation and bear market in stocks awaits those whose net worth has soared mainly due to Fed easing. Regarding TLT, don't pass up an opportunity to buy it 'mechanically' on a pullback to the green line (x=89.85), stop 88.45.

Years ago, I received death threats after writing in the San Francisco Examiner that Apple looked like it was about to go under.  That was in 1997, not long after Steve Jobs returned after a 12-year exile. Ironically, he was fired by the man he'd recruited in 1985 to run the show -- cue the hisses and boos -- Pepsi CEO John Sculley. Apple shares at the time were trading below $5, and its sub-5% share of the desktop market was in a seeming death spiral. The iPhone was ten years distant, and it appeared that nothing could save the company. How wrong I was! My Examiner column provoked such a firestorm that I recanted its conclusions a few weeks later. Any firm that enjoyed such fanatical support was unlikely to go out of business, I concluded. If only I'd bought a thousand shares at the time. I mention all of this because last week's hit-piece on Apple elicited nary a response -- not in the Rick's Picks 'comments' section, not on websites that feature my work -- not in my own chat room. For all I know, the think-piece went unremarked even in the blogosphere, where the leastmost of our concerns often devolve into bloody battles. Regardless, the premise of my commentary -- that shorting APPL and buying TSLA would prove to be the trade of the decade — is on the record and will be tested by time. Gates Renounces His Religion For now, let's move on to a favorite topic, the fraudulent 'wealth effect' that has seized, if not the proletarian mind, then indeed the minds of the 20% who have most benefited from it. The latest faux-wealth superstars are Amazon and Microsoft.  Shares of the latter jumped $23 last week on earnings news that added about

Here's a long-term trading opportunity that seems foolproof: short Apple shares and buy Tesla. Looking out over the next 10 years, this hedge position has the potential to produce outsize profits. How could Apple stumble badly enough to make it work? This is hardly inconceivable. Since Steve Jobs died 14 years ago, the company he co-founded has demonstrated again and again that it couldn't innovate its way out of a wet paper bag. How many more iPhone versions will it take to solve the battery-drain problem? Whatever happened to the Apple car? And how about the device that was going to manage your TV and all of your home entertainment gizmos with a single remote control? Apple's new-products division has repeatedly failed to deliver, and its idea of a technological breakthrough is an iPhone camera with a longer lens and a few million more pixels. As for the AI mania that is raging in the tech sector, the Cupertino-based firm doesn't even have a horse in the race. It wouldn't be the first time an iconic company failed to keep up with the times. Here's a partial list of shockers to remind you how often this has happened: Eastman Kodak, RCA, Intel, Radio Shack, Enron, Woolworth's, Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp. and Polaroid. One could argue that none of these stalwarts achieved Apple's size or market share. True enough, but that hardly guarantees unforeseeable changes in telephony will not blindside Apple. The Pi Phone Tesla and Elon Musk, on the other hand, have the vision not only to see the changes coming, but to bend them toward opportunity. The Pi phone, a potential category killer, is a good example. Musk has repeatedly denied that this device is even on the drawing board, and Wall Street seems to believe him. But why

The 'reverse' pattern shown has worked perfectly so far, triggering no fewer than three consecutive trades that produced a profit. The first was a conventional long at the green line, followed by a short at the secondary Hidden Pivot (p2) at 4172.70.  The last, an easy winner initiated as a 'mechanical' buy at the green line (x=4071,70), remained 'live' as the week ended. This series of winners strongly implies that December Gold will achieve the 4223.20 target shown. The futures would become a compelling short at that price, assuming you've made some money on the way up and that you know how to limit entry risk to small change. I have one outstanding target at 5020 that was identified here earlier. Its provenance is not nearly as clear as the targets we've been using, however, and that's why I am going to stick with the lesser charts for the foreseeable future. If the current move should impale d=4223.20, that would open up a clear path to at least 4351.30, a tad beneath the old high at 4398; or to 4461.30 if any higher.  (For a detailed discussion of a somewhat bigger picture, see my 13:51 post in the chat room on Saturday.) _____  UPDATE (Oct 29, 11:28 a.m. EDT): While we were waiting, a $10,000 trade dropped neatly into our lap. See the chat room thread from yesterday and this morning for precise details.  _______ UPDATE (Oct 30, 6:50 p.m.): I used a big-picture chart in the chat room last Saturday to lend perspective to a discussion about gold's so-far mild correction. EWT forecasters appear to disagree about where and when the retracement will end. Since then, a lesser chart using Hidden Pivot levels has evolved to suggest the correction could already be over. This interpretation would be strengthened by a pop

Bitcoin is on a buy signal that triggered last Wednesday at 108,278 following the sharp reversal of a fleeting spike. A balky recovery has turned the position moderately profitable, with a paper gain of $2642 so far. However, the rally will need to tack on another $2,000 to reach the red line (p=113,039), where partial profit-taking on half the position (four round lots initially, as is customary) would become obligatory.  Risk management thereafter would be predicated on a 122,562 target, but a 103,515 stop-loss will remain in force until then. _______ UPDATE (Oct 26, 5:41 p.m. EDT):  Ka-ching! Anyone who followed my simple instructions from last Wednesday could have exited on today's leap to 113,473 for a profit of $4076.  The secondary Hidden Pivot at 117,801 is the next logical objective, but I am not recommending a new position until I've heard from subscribers who caught the current move. 

Friday's short-squeeze bounce came from within a hair of the 'secondary' (p2) Hidden Pivot of the pattern shown. The rally subsequently signaled a short sale when it hit the green line (x=6700.19).  The trade was do-able only if you used a reverse-pattern trigger to limit risk. I'm not going to recommend it because the futures are already starting to feel the magnetic pull of last week's high, 6766.75. However, we can still record a paper-trade and monitor it closely to determine whether bulls or bears are in charge at the moment. If the latter, the short should work, eventually falling to D=6500.00 despite the fright-mask intensity of Friday's rebound.

The bull market begun in May continues to make slow progress as it head-butts resistance at the 91.24 midpoint Hidden Pivot shown. Because bulls have pushed past it slightly, any swoon to the green line would be a 'mechanical' buy. Such weakness would equate to a perhaps fleeting spike in long-term interest rates, which, although unlikely, is not inconceivable. The rally in Treasurys is ironic because Trump's obsession with stimulus has put a great deal of pressure on U.S. debt. However, it is the President's bold leadership that has attracted bond buyers from around the world, reducing pressure on the Fed to mop up paper for which there might otherwise be weak demand. It is a big change from Biden, a walking corpse whose style of governing was enough to give investors in the U.S. and abroad the dry heaves.  For your information, a rally to the 94.02 target would equate to a fall in long-term rates from a current 4.60 % to 4.39%. Although that's not enough to shift re-fis into second gear, it certainly would be a positive for the U.S. economy.

If you followed the simple instruction I put out Thursday night, which flouted a ballistic rally, you got short using a 94.50-point trigger interval when the futures fell to x=4297.60. Thereafter, you would have covered half the position at 4203.10 on the subsequent decline to just beneath that Hidden Pivot midpoint support. The theoretical gain would have been $9450, enough to provide a substantial cushion to help you manage the remaining risk.  The fully-corrected target is D=4014.30, which, if achieved, would yield an additional profit of $18,890, for a total gain of  $28,340. However, if the bull market in gold is still intact, the futures should bounce to new highs from p=4203.10 rather than continue lower. Alternatively, they could fall to p2=4108.70 before reversing, so you should be alert to this possibility if you are still short.  Most immediately, I'll suggest an 'impulsive' stop-loss at 4332.30, just above a minor peak created Friday on the way down. _______ UPDATE (Oct 21, 10:07 p.m.): Gold was overdue for a brutal correction, so no one should have been surprised by this one.  My hunch is that it is already over.  I posted a 4020.20 retracement target in the chat room this morning when the futures were up around 4200.00. They subsequently dove to a 4021.20 bottom that came within $1.00 (!) of my target. Anyone who used my Hidden Pivot support to get long could have racked up a same-day profit of as much as $11,300 per contract, since the bounce has reached 4133.80 so far. Gold is currently trading for 4130.80, having given up little of the rebound. Let's see if it has bottomed.