Bertie is bound most immediately for the 49,848 target shown in the chart, scaling an ABCD ladder that can still be used to get long 'mechanically', especially in the event of a violent pullback. To be clear, however, the trajectory leaves little doubt that the bull cycle begun from the summer's lows near 30,000 will eventually exceed the target and achieve new record highs. This phase of the rally has been far steeper and less time-consuming than I had anticipated, but in retrospect we can see that the basing period entailed mostly churning bottom-fishers viciously until the last of them threw in the towel. On one recent day, for instance, Bertie stopped out bulls no fewer than nine times with a series of lower lows on the hourly chart. This sort of nastiness has been fractally replicated on the larger charts via fake-out rallies occurring off lows at, near or slightly beneath previous, too-obvious lows. My expectation of a more measured consolidation was based on the assumption that many bulls who got crushed by May's steep selloff would be eager to exit on any rally above 40,000. Apparently not, and that attests to the strong institutional support that has supplanted the wild speculation that used to drive bitcoin. However, supply between 50,000 and 60,000 is another matter, and it is probably weighty enough that it will require at least 5-7 weeks of ceaseless munching, chewing and mastication for bulls to push above 60,000. Price swings are very likely to be tradeable, since this vehicle, for all its nuttiness, has yet to trigger a losing 'mechanical' trade.
Strong employment numbers and the higher interest rates this supposedly will bring drove gold sharply lower on Friday, according to the usual experts. What rubbish! Gold dropped simply because it was time for it to drop. It's not as though the market actually divines the future and discounts it in a rational way. If investors possessed even a mote of rationality, gold would be trading above $2000, discounting the biggest monetary blowout in history. Instead, bullion looks poised to drop even further, since the bounce from an opportune midpoint Hidden Pivot support at 1763.30 was so weak that it's hardly visible on the hourly chart. (That didn't stop us from making money with some very precise bottom-fishing. Check out my 10:48 post in the chat room to see how.) For now, we'll use p2=1722.40 as a minimum downside target and 1683.50 as worst case for the next 2-3 weeks. This is jumping the gun, since I ordinarily wouldn't project another leg down until the midpoint pivot has been decisively breached. In this case, however, I'll give bears the benefit of the doubt, since they seemed so feisty on Friday. We can use the chart shown in the usual ways, to get long or short as opportunities arise, so stay tuned to the trading Room if you care! _______ UPDATE (Aug 8, 10:53 p.m.): The 1683.50 target nailed the low of an $85 death dive within three-tenths of one percent. Virtually any strategy you might have used to get long at the low -- or short ahead of the spectacular, gratuitous swoon -- would have produced a large profit with almost no pain. Maximum gain on the short position from the time the tout went out would have been a little more than $34,000 on four lots; the so-far bounce could
Bulls got stopped out no fewer than eight times last week by a series of lower lows on the hourly chart that ensured they were not aboard when BRTI finally took off. That happened on Thursday, and although we had caught piece of the ride by jumping on this bucking mare a day earlier, we were just spectators went it the explosive part of the move came. It is bound most immediately for the 44,953 target shown. Supply with thicken significantly with each thousand-point gain, but I won't presume to know how quickly bitcoin fever will eat through it. For starters, let's see how well bulls handle the 44,953 resistance, my minimum upside target for the near term. ______ UPDATE (Aug 8, 10:10 p.m.); My target, which was calculated on Saturday when Berty was trading around 42,000, missed the high of Sunday's lunatic leap by less that a half of a percent. It also caught the top of a nearly $2400 selloff that completed a very nasty bear trap. I usually update touts on Sunday after 5:00 p.m., but next time I'll try to remember to publish this one at the time it is composed, since bitcoin's nutty swings are so predictable. As those of you who follow my BTC forecasts in the chat room and here will be aware, over the last couple of years, I have yet not posted a single losing trade among many that were mostly 'mechanical' buys. ______ UPDATE (Aug 9, 9:15 p.m.): I've lowered 'A' one rung to come up with the maxed-out 47665 rally target shown in this chart. You can short there using an rABC set-up, but be prepared to cover for a relatively small profit on a pullback. ______ UPDATE (Aug 12, 9:43 p.m.): At the risk of spoiling a perfect
Last week ended with a push slightly above the top of a trading range that has contained DIA since May. As far as breakouts go, it is so undramatic as to be unworthy of that description. However, since a finishing stroke to the 364.31 rally target has never been in doubt, we'll infer that DIA is at long last on its way there. Because of the large expanse of time consumed by this lethargic bull trend, the only option strategy that would have worked all along was a covered write. Meanwhile, any put butterflies we may have bought along the way would have expired worthless, but they served as a cheap way to leverage the unthinkable. We can still butterfly the rally target with calls, but I'd suggest going out no further than six weeks and paying no more than 0.20 per 'fly. If you are unsure of how to do this, there is a recorded lesson on butterfly spreading accessible on your account page. ______ UPDATE (Aug 21): The bull is beginning to look winded. Although that doesn't necessarily mean 364.31 won't be achieved, we should still be alert to the possibility of a lazy rollover that mutates into a bull-killer. If DIA hasn't traded above 352.70 by Thursday afternoon, nor below 350.00, consider buying a few Sep 30 $10 put butterflys centered on the 340 strike for 0.10 or less. A free mini-course on butterfly spreading is accessible via your account dashboard. ______ UPDATE (AUG 23, 11:19 p.m.): Today's lunatic leap made DIA seem like less of a laggard. If it continues, a decisive push above p2=354.45 of this pattern would put D=356.82 in play. That would be a downpayment on the still-viable 364.31 target of the larger pattern noted above.
Bloomberg missed the real news in its flippant headline, "Return to the Office Five Days a Week? How About Never Again". The article was just family-page pap about how work-from-home employees aren't complaining about the indefinite postponement of a back-to-the-office mandate. With the delta variant on a headline rampage, exile in suburbia seems to suit most of them just fine, and to hell with the 6:00 a.m. commute. The much bigger meaning of this is certain to become the subject of newspaper headlines in years to come, when America's biggest cities are further along the road to bankruptcy and obsolescence. Bloomberg's editors will probably be the last to see this trend developing, so eager have they been to cheer-lead New York City's supposed recovery from the lockdown. They would have readers believe, for one, that the billionaires who fled to Florida, which has no income tax, are eager to return to the Big Apple, where they would face an 11% income levy just for the privilege of watching DeBlasio run New York even deeper into the ground. Paper-Shuffling Sector Bloomberg.com's blithe optimism aside, it's painfully obvious that the U.S. economy, most particularly the colossally large paper-shuffling sector, no longer needs skyscrapers to conduct business. Nor will workers have much use for the services and amenities associated with those skyscrapers and with city life itself. This implies that buses, trains, trolleys and taxicab fleets, restaurants, stores, concert halls, parks, theaters and so many other things that make urban living worth the hassles will be used less and less over time. Do you see the economic problems this will create? If Bloomberg's editors do, they didn't say so; for nowhere in the article was there any mention of the fact that user-based revenues associated with urban amenities will either have to be
Although bitcoin is known for extreme volatility and savage ups and downs, it winds up being the most predictable and tradeable of all the vehicles I track. I cannot recall the last time a mechanical buy in BRTI did not produce a fat profit, and that's going back a couple of years across trends both minor and major. I've established a tracking position for this move because a chat room regular used the pattern shown, buttressed by my explicit guidance, to get long 'mechanically' at the green line. Although I've warned about the thick layers of supply bitcoin will encounter above 40,000 enroute to possible new record highs, there is zero doubt at the moment that this thrust will reach the 44,953 target first broached here last week. Plan on shorting there aggressively if you've made money on the way up. _______ UPDATE (Aug 3, 4:35 p.m.): Ratcheting torture has stopped out bulls no fewer than six times since Sunday night's peak at 41,806. Rick's Picks subscribers appear to have avoided the rapid-fire treachery with a 'mechanical' entry at x=38,526 on Monday. It's under water at the moment, but I still rate the trade '7.2'. The stop-loss is at 36431. _______ UPDATE (Aug 4, 10:31 p.m.): After dipping below the green line, BRTI bounced $2400 to 39,949 putting our position nicely in-the-black. Most subscribers who reported doing the trade in the chat room seemed to have taken a partial profit, but if you haven't done so, exit half here (at 39,374) and use a 38,305 stop-loss for the rest. _____ UPDATE (Aug 5, 10:34 p.m.,): Okay, okay, we get the picture. The psychotics who play with this loaded pistol are clearly able to aim it 10% either way, and sometimes both, on a given day. This has not affected the
December Gold's promising mid-week rally died an inch shy of a mid-July's peak at 1839, disappointing bullion fans for the umpteenth time. The rally was impulsive nonetheless on the hourly chart, and that is why we should view the pullback, sharp as it's been, as merely corrective. We'll continue to use the 1858.60 target of a middling 'reverse' pattern as a minimum upside objective, but for trading purposes I'll suggest focusing on the bullish pattern begun from Wednesday's 1795.60 low. Stay tuned to the chat room for tradeable details as they develop in real time. _______ UPDATE (Aug 4, 8:30 a.m. ET): Gold has taken a stab higher today, slightly exceeding the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance of a pattern projecting to as high as 1850.10 over the near term. We'll use that Hidden Pivot as a new minimum upside projection, since you can never go far wrong in gold by lowering your sights. Skeptical though we should be, a pullback to the green line (1818.70) would trigger a 'mechanical' buy sufficient appealing to warrant a rating of 7.0. We needn't treat p2=1839.60 as anything special, although a little extra caution there is suggested, assuming it is reached. Here's the latest chart. ______ UPDATE (Aug 4, 10:41 p.m.): The 'mechanical' long from 1818.70 barely survived the wickedest head-fake reversal we've seen in recent memory. All we can do now is stick with our game plan, implying a stop-loss at 1808.1, a single tick beneath today's hellacious low. It should be held o-c-o with an order to close out the position at p=1829.20. _______ UPDATE (Aug 5, 10:48 p.m.): The trade stopped out for a $4000 loss. This was the first losing trade using a 'mechanical' signal in as long as I can remember. The Hidden Pivot Method doesn't care how wacky
The Dow Industrials have been screwing the pooch for nearly four months. That's when DIA first popped through a midpoint resistance at 335.00 that is associated with a long-term rally target at 364.31. However, this ETF vehicle has since failed to break decisively above p2=349.65, keeping the outcome in limbo and making DIA a very unappetizing trade, other than for covered writes and similar short-premium option positions. You can see for yourself that the graph provides little reason to think the target won't be reached. Absent a game-changing plunge exceeding mid-June's 333 low, we'll keep this tout on the back burner. _______ UPDATE (Aug 5, 10:56 p.m.): Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
If you're worried that interest rates are about to explode because of inflation, the graph above would seem to offer comfort. From a visual standpoint, the gentle rollover that has occurred over the last several months has sapped the vigor from a menacing spike that had pushed yields on the 10-Year Note from 0.40% at the start of the pandemic to a high of 1.76% in early April. The surge also failed to surpass previous highs near 2%, suggesting there is considerable resistance at that level. For the time being, this holds positive implications for the U.S. economy, since T-Note rates largely determine how much mortgage and corporate borrowers must pay for loans. It also helps to sustain the illusion of a stability in the global banking system. That's because even a small tightening of the interest rate screw would have dire consequences if applied to the $2 quadrillion of borrowing amassed in the derivatives market. These financial instruments are used ostensibly for hedging, but over time their use has expanded to accommodate leveraged speculation on a cosmic scale. A Network of Nerves What would it take to crash this market? No one has a clue, although it is probably fair to say that it is as complex, and therefore ultimately as fragile, as a human nervous system. The synaptic connections are based on trust rather than neurons, however, and that is why a systemic failure would likely be total rather than merely in one "hemisphere" or the other. A further implications is that if stress levels got high enough, something akin to a stroke would result. Fortunately, with ten-year rates at a current 1.24%, we are well below the danger zone. That's equivalent to a blood-pressure reading of perhaps 130/80. Realize, however, that this seemingly normal reading exists only
Our focus for quite some time has been on a 363.15 rally target (or possibly 364.31, the 'D' of a larger pattern dating back to November 2020). Ordinarily I don't try to correlate targets of different vehicles, but in this case, charts for DIA and QQQ look so toppy that I can only caution against being too confident about a further rally in the Dow to 'D'. Actually, the current stall has occurred at p2=349.65 of the larger pattern, making it potentially subject to Matt's Curse. Subscriber Matt Barnes' theory holds that stalls, when they occur precisely at p2, produce reaction moves down to 'C' or lower. Here's the bigger pattern showing the stall and the 364.31 target.
