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If stocks plunged Friday on news that Trump had caught the virus, and then began to surge as soon as it looked like he would recover, investors must like the guy, right? Or so it would seem.  The Dow rose almost 500 points on Monday as the President's doctors prepared to send him home earlier than most of us had anticipated.  Since they are taking no chances, we can confidently conclude he's in pretty good shape. The maudlin muckrakers who invent the news have been doing their damndest to suggest otherwise, but they've only embarrassed themselves with an effusion of ignorance and cant.  Much of it centered on the claim that Trump's doctors misled them or withheld important details about his treatment, but it is only in the staunchest redoubts of Trump Derangement Syndrome that anyone much cared. As for investors, they have yet one more reason to tune out polls that would have us believe Biden will give Trump a good fight. If this were likely, the Dow would be trading 5000 points lower and fixing to plummet anew.

We hold sixteen Nov 20 140/150/160 call butterflies for an average 0.36, based on an idea posted in the trading room a week ago. The stock turned mushy at the end of last week, causing the bull spread to fill for as little as 0.32. However, I am using a higher cost basis because several subscribers reported paying more.  Do nothing further for now and cancel any orders that were not filled. The most we can lose on this trade is $36 per four-option spread, but it has the potential in theory to produce a profit of as much as $1,000 per. That would occur if the stock were to rally to 150 between now and November 20, when the options expire. We are getting 20-to-1 odds on this, and you can judge for yourself if you'd lay that bet. Practically speaking, we would  be doing well to exit for $700 if everything goes right, but we'll still have opportunities to cash out for a profit on the way up if AAPL rallies. For now, as is customary, I'll suggest offering half of your spreads to close to 0.72, twice what we paid, good till canceled. If the order fills, the remainder of our position will effectively have cost us nothing. Our actual rally target, a Hidden Pivot, lies at 151.94. _______ UPDATE (Pct 5, 4:04 p.m.):  With AAPL trading for 116.47 at the closing bell, the spread settled at 0.39 and carried a delta value of 3. This implies the spread will increase in value by 3 cents for every $1 increase in the price of the underlying shares. The spread is 'positive-gamma', meaning we will automatically pick up deltas and get 'longer' as AAPL moves toward 150. Above 150, we'll lose deltas and become 'delta neutral' near and

The Cubes laid an egg on Friday to end a week that had begun with a scorching rally. The news concerning Trump caused bulls to turn tail and left bears less than eager to cover short positions ahead of the weekend.  From a technical standpoint this vehicle failed to trigger a 'mechanical' buy on the drop to the green line because it had failed to reach the red line first (see inset).  There is nothing bearish about this per se, but it is most unusual for QQQ to miss an opportunity to signal a 'mechanical' long following a decent rally leg on the hourly chart. Since the failed upthrust was impulsive nonetheless, having exceeded some distinctive 'external' peaks, we should give bulls the benefit of the doubt as the week begins. All bets are off, however, if the news from Walter Reed Hospital is concerning. _______ UPDATE (Oct 5, 5:23 p.m.): If bulls are going to put Friday's punk performance behind them, they'll need to push this hoax up to at least p=286.20 -- or better yet past it, to demonstrate some of the mettle it will take to achieve D=312.29. _______ UPDATE (Oct 9): Even with a short-squeeze gap on the opening, the Cubes still fell a millimeter shy of p=286.20 when they ought to have exceeded it. We'll give bulls the benefit of the doubt for the moment anyway, but the yellow flag will be out until such time as they impale the red line. _______ UPDATE (Oct 12, 7:12 p.m.):  My gut is saying D=312.29 will be reached eventually, but you can try shorting p2=299.25 anyway.  Use puts priced under 0.65 that expire this Friday, but do the trade only if QQQ is within 0.07 points of the target. Stop yourself out if 301.40 is touched. Here's

Wall Street kept its cool Friday on news that President Trump and Melania had contracted the virus. Investors were so cool, in fact, that one might have wondered whether even a collision between Earth and a giant asteroid would shake their confidence in the Fed's ability to levitate shares indefinitely.  Although we might have expected the stock market to suffer devastation on a day when the nation's leader has been stricken with a disease that has killed more than a million people, the broad averages instead faked lower, then higher, manipulated by the usual svengalis to extract maximum profits from the rubes and the panic-stricken. Their hysteria lasted less than hour after word of Trump's contagion crossed the tape just before 1:00 a.m. In a mere 36 minutes the selloff was over: Dow index futures turned sharply following a 600-point plunge and never looked back. Shares see-sawed overnight, but in the minutes before the opening bell they reignited on a manic binge of short-covering, recouping all but 70 points of what had been lost after the news came out. 'Mild' Symptoms The president's symptoms, as well as Melania's, reportedly were mild, but so were Boris Johnson's initially when the British Prime Minister fell ill in April. His conditioned worsened after several days and he nearly died.  Trump has proven himself to be hardier than a Seal Rock barnacle, and perhaps that is why investors treated the news as just another buy-the-dip opportunity. But if, heaven forbid, his condition should worsen in the days ahead, the business-as-usual shenanigans and thievery we saw on Friday are going to give way to a selling panic that will shake up even the smart money. We wish Mr. Trump and his wife a speedy and complete recovery in the meantime. If he comes back stronger

Traders spent the last half of the week torturing each other for who-knows-what reasons. The downtrending pattern is too ugly, and the one-off 'A' too puny, for a precise call on further weakness, but we can still use the 93.34 target, since it is good enough for government work. That means Friday's fleeting rally to the green line was a 'mechanical' shorting opportunity, which further implies that 93.34 is likely to be achieved. If so, this would give bullion at least a little buoyancy early in the week. I wouldn't count on much more than that, however. _______ UPDATE (Oct 5, 5:40 p.m.): The bounce came from three cents above my 93.34 target, but it was not sufficiently robust for us to presume the correction begun from 94.61 on 9/25 is over. Set an alert at 94.04 if you want to be confident the trend is changing. _______ UPDATE (Oct 6, 8:40 p.m.): DXY took a strong leap from 93.34 on a retest, sparing anyone who was long in gold or silver a nasty surprise.  The rally would need to pop above 94.34 to turn the chart bullish again and put a 95.33 target in play. Here's the graph.

AAPL is actually lagging the Nasdaq for a rare change, well shy of a key resistance that will determine whether the stock is headed for a moon shot to 152. It is currently trading for around 117, but the bullish trigger point at 127.53 lies 11 points above, or 9.1%. By contrast, the QQQ, an ETF proxy for the Nasdaq 100, need only rally a further 1.4% to reach a comparable benchmark at 286.20, a midpoint Hidden Pivot. My guess is that the manic energy of Freaky Friday will get it there, but I'll be curious to see whether DaBoyz can close the Cubes above it. If so, it will give them a running start when index futures begin to trade again on Sunday night.

The most bearish thing you could say about the stock market these days is that it has been damn near impossible to short. Perhaps it's for the better where bears are concerned. The chart above shows how the QQQs, an ETF proxy for the Nasdaq 100, have turned what could have become a bearish head-and-shoulders pattern into a broad, bullish accumulation zone. This is not to say stocks can't possibly tank, but if they do, few bears will have survived to enjoy the ride. AAPL, the most institutionally beloved stock in the history of the world, has traced out a similar pattern, one that could become a base for a shot at $152 (a Hidden Pivot target). That would represent a 31% move from the current $116. This of course means the broad averages are about to move significantly higher as well, although probably not as steeply as the steroid-fed AAPL.

Investors took no discernible position ahead of the debate, allowing stocks to slosh around the whole day and to close near the middle of their range. Even if you could be sure of the outcome, how would you have bet it?  The pundits seem to think Biden could benefit from low expectations if he gets through the evening with no serious mental lapses. But would that be good for stocks' For America? Trump could surprise merely by being tactful if his opponent stumbles badly: "Senator, if you need a moment to compose yourself, there's no hurry." If Biden unexpectedly runs steady as a Dodge Dart on 84 octane, it could knock Trump off-balance. Anything more than a glancing blow might send the incumbent reeling. As entertainment, the best the audience can hope for is a lot of low blows and eye gouging. Moderator Chris Wallace, the Fox News personality least despised by his counterparts at CNN and MSNBC, has a chance to keep it clean. If he succeeds too well, perhaps Jerry Springer will have a turn at the next debate? Isn't that what America has wanted all along?

December Silver's failure to reach the bearish target at 21.50 shown in the chart is encouraging. The pattern is clean and compelling, if somewhat  gnarly, and the target should therefore have been achieved if sellers had good command of the board. The fact that they evidently don't is bullish by implication, and that means this rally is probably no worse than an even bet to probe resistance between $27 and $29 that accumulated over the last six weeks of summer. A pop on Thursday above 25.30 would all but clinch that scenario. _______ UPDATE (Sep 30, 5:55 p.m.ET): The futures went the wrong way, but this did not diminish the so-so odds of a pop above 25.30.