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The  chicken-hearted poke above p=347.92 that ended the week was unconvincing for anyone hoping the 363.15 target with which it is associated will be achieved. Price action at the midpoint pivot is always crucial to such assessments, and the action so far says the bull cycle  begun from 332.68 on 6/18 is weakening. Despite this, my expectation is that the Dow will get pulled higher by the lunatic exuberance of some of the other indexes, notably the S&Ps and the Nasdaq.  If the effect is strong enough, it would generate a two-day DIA close above 347.92, an event that would warrant shifting our focus toward 363.15, a modest, 4% climb from here.

As usual, silver's chart is more encouraging than gold's, but not much. The impulse leg shown in the chart is legitimate, but we should want to see two further signs of health before we allow ourselves more encouragement. First, the spasmodic rally that tested bulls' patience on Friday needs to exceed the 'D' target at 26.77;  then, with no pussyfooting, the futures must surge above the 27.36 'external' peak I've highlighted in the chart. Otherwise, expect more tedious ping-ponging between uninspired bulls and enfeebled bears. ______ UPDATE (Jul 8, 10:35 p.m.): This one is for rABC-savvy traders only, since I am not about to advertise its proprietary details explicitly. Suffice it to say, p=25.69 in this chart is ideally situated in the discomfort zone to set up an rABC long that I rate '7.9'.  Try a=25.94 (7/8 at 3:00 a.m.), and don't hesitate to give it a second try if you get stopped out. ______ UPDATE (Jul 9, 8:18 a.m.): So far no trade,, since the futures must come down to at least 25.70 to enable the rABC set-up noted above. The potential opportunity remains viable.

The bull market's relentless ascent has settled into a short-squeeze groove that is duplicating the steep, ratcheting trajectory of April. There is bullish buying power behind it, but the rally's main driver is short-covering by traders who quite evidently have been trying to pick tops every millimeter of the way. That's apparent in the inset chart, which highlights a protracted series of very minor tops. Notice that there are relatively few dramatic upward spikes, other than the occasional goosing needed to trigger explosive bear panics.  Your editor and a subscriber whose chat room handle is 'Som' were among those trying to pick a top on Friday with technically derived targets at, respectively, 4341.75 and 4342.75.  The subscriber's short alone survived because it was judiciously tied to a closing-basis stop-loss above where the futures settled. Whether it survives holiday trading Sunday evening and Monday remains to be seen, but the trade will have been a game try in any event. If it is stopped out, here's a chart with a new rally target at 4413.75 that would become our minimum upside objective for the near term. The pattern is gnarly-beautiful enough that we should expect it to work well for purposes of trading or forecasting. However, I will be on the alert for a possible reversal from around 4365.  That is not a Hidden Pivot, but rather the visual middle of the void between p2 and D. We are doing more and more trades using this 'discomfort zone', simply because the quants, yahoos and reprobates we compete against for profits have taken too avidly to the more obvious ABCD patterns. ______ UPDATE (Jul 6, 5:13 p.m. EDT): The short position entered Friday at 4343.75 was showing a profit of about $2000 at the low of today's swoon. I posted informal guidance

I was premature when I gave the green light to gold bulls five weeks ago.  "If you’re a bullion investor," I wrote at the time, "you can buy the stuff now without fear or qualm." Had you taken this advice, you'd have gotten aboard just in time to get smashed in the head, since gold was about to have its worst week in six months. I made my recommendation seem even more foolish by running it under the headline Gold Really Sucks. Here's Why.  This was just a ploy to grab the attention of gold bulls, since the commentary itself, as readers soon realized, was quite bullish. So what changed my mind?  I'd like to say that fresh evidence on the charts swayed me. In fact, I actually ignored a flashing-yellow signal early in March, when GDX, the gold miners ETF, breached a key low at 31.22 from nine months earlier. This is shown in the chart, and it created a glow-in-the-dark 'impulse leg' that was unmistakably bearish. Unfortunately, my focus was elsewhere, mainly on a few subjective factors that were bound to mislead anyone looking for a long-elusive ray of sunshine in precious metals. For one, I noted, bitcoin was finally getting its comeuppance, presumably freeing up speculative energy for bullion. And for two, there had been no vicious takedowns in gold recently, ostensibly because the bad guys finally realized it was time for gold to start discounting the rising crescendo of inflation fears.  I was wrong on both counts, for gold and silver were about to get hit with their steepest two-day sell-off since November. Further selling mercifully stalled, but the jury is still out on whether another wave is coming. Rallies Died It took an email from a correspondent to open my eyes to the bearish reality

Quite a few who were late to the party are now bag holders who paid $45k, $50k, $60k or more for a piece of the action in the hottest speculative vehicle of them all. Now a good many of them must be praying for an opportunity to escape significant loss. It is their desperation that will congeal and harden into thick layers of supply between here mid-April's record high near 64,000. My gut feeling is that bitcoin will have to punish bulls for yet more weeks, or even months, with a dip into the low 20,000s to set up the next big rally.  It will be supported not so much by wild-eyed buyers, whose ranks will have been thinned by May-June's 54% plunge, but by the reluctance of those who got on board for relatively small change to sell an investment they confidently believe will trade for $100,000 or more. Whatever happens, calling the swings in this banshee has not been rocket science.  This was demonstrated last week when a 35,433 correction-rally target disseminated to subscribers Sunday evening came within 1/100th of a percentage point of nailing the exact high of last week's nearly $4000 plunge. Skeptical? Spend some time in the Trading Room and monitor the targets yourself. _______ UPDATE (Jun 30, 8:44 p.m. ET): A feeble blip tripped a feeble buy signal predicated on minimum upside to p=36,129, shown in this chart.  As always, an easy move through it would portend more strength to p2, in this case 37,164. ______ UPDATE (Jul 1, 6:52 p.m.): Bulls squandered  a promising impulse leg, hinting that they are too weak to deliver. I'm still as bearish as I was above, but too bored with bitcoin's pointless antics to elucidate why, let alone waste time calculating minor targets.

Fear of the much-ballyhooed Delta variant was nowhere in evidence recently at North Carolina's McCormick Field, home of a minor-league baseball team called the Asheville Tourists. The team, a high Single-A farm club operated by the Houston Astros, filled McCormick's 4000 seats to near-capacity, and there was nary a mask in sight. It was great baseball, which turns out to be the perfect antidote for non-stop Covid doomsday-porn emanating from Fauci's office and amplified to a deafening pitch by his ignorant, Great Reset-obsessed lackeys in the news media. As fans of the game might expect, it featured entertaining highs and lows just like the majors. A towering pop-up above second base attracted enough fielders to catch a swarm of fireflies; instead, they caught nothing when the ball dropped between them. But a runner on first base looked even worse when he failed to keep running past second base even though there were two outs.  The defense redeemed itself with a spectacular diving catch in the ninth inning by the Tourists' center fielder -- a risky effort, considering there were no men on base and his team had a four-run lead.  Afterward, a terrific fireworks display sponsored by chain-grocer Ingles, rocked the neighborhood. 'Delta' Thrives on Ignorance For the good of America, Fauci and his Goebbelsian PR crew should take in a few baseball games this summer. Otherwise, they'll continue to work overtime trying to convince us that 'Delta' is the most menacing development in all of history. But when was a virus variant ever more deadly than the original strain? If this were so, the variant, even if it tends to spread more easily, would quickly extinguish itself by killing off the host. Under the circumstances, how dangerous could it actually be, given that more than 99% of those who

The chimps who manage your hard-earned dollars must have decided back in August that they would hold this overvalued gas-bag aloft rather than subject it to a bear market. It has been marking time ever since, albeit with gratuitous swings in either direction, presumably to avoid getting cramps. From a technical standpoint, IWM would actually generate a 'mechanical' buy signal if it were to plummet to the green line (215.45).  Ordinarily I would rate this trade only a '5.7' or so on a 1-10 scale of desirability. But because a more serious breakdown seems unlikely, I am recommending the trade anyway, albeit for a ride merely to p=222.99.  Alternatively, IWM would become a fetching short at D=237.72 if it ever gets there. ______ UPDATE (Jul 8, 11:20 p.m. ET): The trade could actually trigger, so stay alert if you've been waiting.  Here's the chart, and I am recommending buying not options,  but as many shares as you can afford up to 400.  

Elsewhere on the home page, I've suggested taking last week's defenestration of the S&Ps and IWM with a grain of salt, since it is just the chimps shifting money amongst the various "themes" they determine with a toss of a dart each month. Even with the Guvmint force-feeding dollars into stocks, real estate and the consumer economy, it takes gargantuan sums to hold the shares of trillion-dollar companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft continuously aloft, never mind move them higher. That's why Friday's breach of C=335.20 (see inset) is unlikely to be the start of a bear market, but rather a scripted way to economize on the continuation of a bull market whose demise is long overdue.  Well, yes, it's always possible a bear market has begun, but we'll likely do better looking for DIA to recover its footing somewhere in the range 320-327.  I am not using Hidden Pivots to project lows there, by the way, but rather the common-sense assumption that the important March 25 bottom at 320.62 is likely to hold. _______ UPDATE (Jun 22, 11:46 p.m. ET): After last week's decisive breakdown, DIA has rallied to trip a 'conventional' buy signal at x=339.49 shown in this chart. I don't much trust the signal, and so I am not recommending a trade. We rarely initiate one on this kind of signal, but I'll warm to the idea if bulls take on midpoint resistance at p=347.92 [corrected] with gusto.

We shouldn't be too surprised if bitcoin mania resurfaces a fourth time following a brutal correction, but first it will need to visit sufficient pain on all of the yahoos who got their feet wet above $40,000 to make them think twice about doing anything so foolish again. Those who got in at much lower prices -- for hundreds of dollars, even -- will of course continue to sit tight, putting a floor under the cryptocurrency somewhere between $20k and $30k. For now, though, it looks like BRTI is about to test support for a third time at p=31,800 (see inset).  This Hidden Pivot has proven resilient enough to make its decisive breach no better than an even-odds bet, assuming BRTI gets there at all.  We'll be watching in any event for signs that bitcoin's most ardent, deep-pocketed sponsors are cocky enough to hold the line at 30,000, even if they don't really have to just to prove something to skeptics. ______ UPDATE (Jun 21, 11:37 p.m. ET): Even though bitcoin has been down by as much as $3500 today, it looks well nigh invincible. China took a meat cleaver to bitcoin miners, and yet bears cannot even push this vehicle down to 30,000. Its deep-pocketed sponsors evidently believe that a test of that seemingly important number is so widely expected that it can't happen because bears have already sold out. We shall see, but BRTI acts as though it is well under control and being accumulated at these levels. ______ UPDATE (Jun 22, 10:14 a.m.): This morning's plunge made it clear that bitcoin-lovers are waiting for still-better prices. The decisive breach of p=31,800 AND 30,000 in one fell swoop implies BRTI will now fall to at least p2=26,422.  And yes, I am impressed at how They held it aloft