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The inflation trade is struggling for loft, a potential victim of its own, wild popularity. “We don’t have strong reflation-trade momentum at the moment because people are waiting for more data,” said Daniel Tenengauzer, markets strategy chief at Bank of New York Mellon. By his logic, all that it would take to stoke inflation would be a little more…inflation. So much for investors' supposed collective prescience. Tenengauzer and his flock should instead be asking themselves when was the last time every investor on the planet got on the same side of a bet and made money. Answer: never. That hasn’t stopped them from praying that Tuesday’s release of CPI numbers for March will show a significant jump. Don’t these guys know that the harder they hope for statistical evidence of inflation, the less likely it is that the markets will move their way if and when it comes? Buy the rumor, sell the news, as the saying goes. Prominent among those who have made money for clients in the past by betting against the popular wisdom is Lacy Hunt, chief economist at Hoisington Investment Management.  The firm’s official position is that “inflationary psychosis” has gotten too far ahead of the real thing. Hunt is an old-timer who well understands how inflation fears can flout reality – for decades, even --causing otherwise astute investors to do the wrong thing. That was the case from about 1980 on, when the few un-fearful investors who stuck with Treasurys made a bundle, racking up capital gains of 15% or more in many years. They outperformed the herd because bond prices at the long end of the yield curve are highly leveraged inversely to small decreases in short term rates. There were blips against this strategy, of course, such as in 1991, when nearly everyone

Bitcoin has been a 'mechanical' trader's dream, since virtually every buy signal that has occurred on the longer-term charts has been a winner.  For your guidance, I've been paper-trading a 47,485 buy signal from late February that is tied to a 66,880 target. It survived a 41,500 stop-loss and was ripe for profit-taking on half the position at 57,363, a secondary (p2) Hidden Pivot that comes from the weekly chart.  The new chart (see inset) shows a textbook 'mechanical' buy at 50,400 that occurred on March 25. Although it is too late to act on the signal, I am reproducing the graph nonetheless in order to introduce a new target at 72,230 that can take supplant the old one at 69,172.  Because of the clarity of the pattern, I expect a tradeable top to occur at or very near the target. The move through p has been labored, so we should expect the remaining trek to D to be herky-jerky, if not to say tortuous. As always, a dramatic blast through the D target (72,230) on first contact would imply that seemingly fantastic prices above $100,000 are actually feasible. _______ UPDATE (Apr 14, 11:22 p.m. ET): Buyers repeatedly head-butted p2=64,953 of the pattern targeted on 72.230 but eventually gave up. They'll be back, presumably to blast their way past this secondary pivot for a shot at 72,230. Don't forget about D=66,880, the target of the original, long-term pattern, since it could prove stubborn.

May Silver came within a half-cent on Thursday of tripping a theoretical 'buy' signal at 25.05 tied to a rally target at 29.00. The rally began Wednesday from a 23.74 low 46 cents above a 23.28 Hidden Pivot support I'd flagged as a potentially juicy buying opportunity. Some of you may have jumped the gun, to good advantage, since, in the chat room, 'Farmer' did everything but fire a cannon to alert subscribers to an imminent turn based on his own 'technicals'. We shall see. If the rally lengthens, surpassing some small 'external' peaks shown in the chart without pausing for breath, that would be most encouraging, especially since it will have begun with a clear correction target having gone unfulfilled.  The pattern shown in the chart is a 'reverse ABC', but I expect it to be serviceable for trading purpose and for gauging the strength of the rally along the way. A two-day close above p=26.37 or a spike decisively through it intraday would strongly imply more upside to D=29.00. _____ UPDATE (Apr 5, 5:41 p.m. EDT):  A timid feint higher Sunday night tripped a theoretical 'buy' signal, but the futures have gone nowhere since.  On balance I am mildly bullish, using the pattern shown in this chart for now.  Notice that today's pullback to the green line triggered a seemingly appealing 'mechanical' buy that is only slight profitable at the moment after having gone $850-per-contract in the red intraday. The pattern's 25.47 'D' pivot can serve as a minimum upside objective for Tuesday. ______ UPDATE (Apr 8, 10:36 a.m.): The futures popped exactly to the 25.47 target in the dead of night, pulled back briefly then launched a new leg higher. The 25.775 target shown in this chart can serve as a minimum upside objective for now, but

Gold tripped a so-so mechanical short Thursday when it rallied to 1730.70, the green line. When I mentioned this in the chat room, I rated the trade a 7.0; however, on closer inspection it is not quite so appealing. For one, the three legs of the pattern are too mellow; and for two, the rally to 'x' began above the sweet spot. Because of the $14,000 initial risk on four contracts, I advised initiating the trade with an 'reverse ABC 'pattern on the hourly chart that has yet to trigger. It would reduce theoretical risk to around $1000. I am now suggesting that you cancel the trade until we've seen how gold opens following a three-day weekend. If the June contract pushes above C=1756.00 it would be as bullish a sign as we've seen in bullion in a while. Alternatively, if the futures relapse you can use 1614.60 as a downside target. That would be a back-up-the-truck opportunity to get long, as far as I'm concerned. _______ UPDATE (Apr 5, 6:45 p.m. EDT): This rally looks like doo-doo, with upthrusts that are failing to surpass prior peaks on the hourly chart. I'll take this as mildly bullish, since gold has a nasty habit of reversing when it looks worst, and of dying just when one feels encouraged. 

Biden’s $2.2 trillion ‘infrastructure’ plan is quite ambitious as far as Government boondoggles go. But what if it’s just the Democrats' opening bid? “We can do $10 trillion!” exhorted Alexandria Octavio-Cortez in a wild-eyed remark that is unlikely to be challenged by fellow Democrats or the New York Times.  Even $10 trillion would be chump change, however, if Biden’s Trojan horse for the Green New Deal births the full-Monty environmental and civic transformation envisioned by AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and some other socialist zealots on the Hill. It is ironic that Biden chose Pittsburgh as a backdrop last week to showcase the pandemic era's first fiscal-stimulus monstrosity. Pittsburgh has been a model for urban redevelopment in the post-War era, having avoided getting sucked into an economic quagmire by its dying steel industry. Instead, the 'Iron City' transformed itself into an urban success story with massive investment in health care, banking, higher education, parks and cultural amenities. Is the Federal Government capable of deploying funds so judiciously?  It seems unlikely at a time when America's political leadership has embraced the practice of financing vast Federal outlays with money from trees. Note also that Pittsburgh’s regeneration was achieved over many decades with private investment that sought maximum economic returns. In contrast, Biden's plan seeks maximum political returns and contains little actual spending on potholes. With a partisan emphasis on social engineering, it seems more likely to clone Detroit's dereliction than Pittsburgh's prosperity. 'Racist' Highways Indeed, only a reported 5% of the proposed new trillions is earmarked for the repair of roads and bridges. A significant share of what remains evidently would go toward social tinkering and -- heaven help us! -- improving the weather. That’s what Pete Buttigieg, among others, has in mind, believing as he does that the transportation sector

Two weeks after touching a long-term Hidden Pivot target at 234.82, IWM remains well below it, even after a quintessentially phony short-squeeze on Friday minutes before the closing bell. The rally would begin to look interesting if it can surpass last Wednesday's peak at 221.33, but until that happens the burden of proof will lie with bulls. Each pullback on the intraday charts would need to produce a rally exceeding a prior peak on the hourly chart for new record highs to start looking credible. Above the one at 221.33, they lie respectively at 226.75, 228.60 and 232.93.

The technological wizardry that has given us smart phones, desktop computers, electric cars and flat-screen TVs has masked a pernicious decline in America’s standard of living since the 1950s. One area where this is painfully obvious is the deterioration of customer service. Recall the scene in Back to the Future when a car pulls into a filling station and three attendants jump up to pamper it. One checks under the hood, another makes sure the tires are properly inflated and a third pumps 28-cent gas.  Director Spielberg intended this as a wry comment on how much companies valued their customers back then, and how hard they worked to keep us happy. These days, most companies care so little about us that they have cut off access to phone support, even for the most serious problems. The Death of Support A friend recently spent more than fifty hours trying to clear up a billing problem with Amazon. She could not access her account, and each time they reset it she would find herself locked out again the next morning. Although Amazon offers limited phone support, in this case it was useless because the problem was deemed “technical” and unrelated to a merchandise screw-up. It took literally hundreds of phone calls to get nowhere, and every call was impeded by the familiar gauntlet of voice menus. Even with a case number, it took 20 minutes to reach a supervisor. At least a dozen of these guys interceded along the way, creating a daisy chain of broken promises and meaningless apologies. Where abusing customers is concerned, Facebook is in a class by itself, so inscrutable, opaque and coldly uncaring that one might think they’d outsourced call support to North Korea. I was spending as much as $5,000 a month with them on advertising;

The chart, with a 234.82 target that was missed by a fraction of a millimeter, is starting to look familiar, but it shows the last clear bull-market target that can be extrapolated from monthly bars. Moreover, the ABC coordinates of the bull-market pattern are anchored in bedrock, tied respectively to the bear market low in 2009, then the high and low of the pandemic crash. I advised getting short via call options in TZA, an inverse 3x bear ETF, and the 15% rally that has occurred since, from 29.54 to 34.09, could have been used to take a healthy partial profit.  Set a 30.08 stop-loss for what remains, but you can raise it to break-even levels if you have yet to exit any shares or calls. _______ UPDATE (Mar 24, 11:20 p.m. EDT): The possibility that a major top is in remains a decent bet, given that the plunge from within a hair of the 234.82 target I'd drum-rolled earlier is now at nearly 10%.  If a reversal is coming, it is likely to come from around 206, a number based on a gut feeling I have rather than on an ABCD pattern.

After topping a micron above a longstanding bull-market target at 337.10, the Cubes have come down hard. They would have tripped a 'mechanical' buy if the selloff had hit x=294.75, but it was not to be. Instead, a weak rally from just above this benchmark pushed the trade out of range. Perhaps this was for the better, since the subsequent rally has so far failed to achieve the p=329.40 midpoint pivot where we might have taken a partial profit.  The 'mechanical' buy would still trigger if QQQ relapses to the green line, but I am not enthusiastic enough to recommend a straight limit-bid there. We can use the theoretical 'buy' signal nonetheless to set up a less risky entry, but there's no hurry to settle on a plan until such time as x=294.75 is approached (or perhaps exceeded).