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Who could have guessed Wall Street would go crazy over Joe Biden? Stocks staged an epic rally on Wednesday after the 77-year-old comeback kid resurrected his campaign in Super Tuesday balloting. Biden's success did what the Fed's 50-basis-point rate cut earlier in the day had failed to do -- i.e., rally the stock market. Now, presumably, all Biden has to do to leave Trump choking on dust in the polls is say he's always been a strong advocate of easy credit. Perhaps the guy can cure coronavirus, too? We await word on this from Biden himself, since he has never been shy about taking credit for...everything. In truth, it was not bumbling, quid-pro-quo Joe's victory the markets were celebrating, but rather the drubbing that Bernie suffered. Although the Marxist lunatic is still very much in the race, Tuesday's results quelled fears that he will run away with the nomination. Biden now has more than a fighting chance, and his candidacy could pick up steam if he floats Hillary as a possible VP choice. That could make lemonade from the lemon-like fear that he could sink into full-blown dementia before 2024. The good news for the Republicans is that a Biden/Clinton ticket would put two world-class liars at the top of the ballot in November. Both of them are certified, graft-grubbing weasels who made every dime of their wealth by selling access. Under the circumstances, perhaps the press might have to go a little easier on Trump and the source of his money. Yeah, sure. Positioning Biden's Marbles Fox News has been pushing the notion that Biden has lost his marbles and that voters have picked up on this. Democrats needn't worry, since we can expect Joe's fawning supporters in the press either not to notice, or to profess to be

I'd projected a plunge in 30-Year rates to 1.58% a while back, but it now looks like they could fall as low as 0.73%. The earlier forecast was intended to match a still unachieved 186^04 rally target for T-Bond futures, whose price correlates inversely with yields. They are currently trading for around 172^10, leaving plenty of room to rally. If so, yields on the long bond, which hit the 1.58 target today, are bound much lower. A 0.73% rate would be congruent with a deep economic recession, so it's possible the stock market and the economy have topped.  On the 10-Year Note, the corresponding yield would be negative. I regard this as very unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that there is $13 trillion of sovereign debt priced to yield less than zero. My guess is that the 10-Year will fall not to the D target of the pattern shown in this chart, but to the secondary pivot at 0.30%. For now, we'll use this number, a Hidden Pivot support, as a downside objective.

In the latest update to the Rick's Picks home page, I've revised an interest rate forecast for the 30-year bond to -- better sit down for this -- 0.73%. This is an implied recession/depression away from the current 1.60%, so you may want to jot the new number down. I got a wake-up call on this from my friend Doug Behnfield, whose name will be familiar to anyone who has followed Rick's Picks for a while. Doug, a Boulder-based financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, is not only the smartest investor I know, he is one of the smartest guys. He's been loaded to the gills with muni bonds, among other investables,  and is having the kind of year with them that even Soros or Buffett would envy. Doug called this afternoon to ask about the 1.58% interest rate target I'd proffered a while ago for the 30-Year T-Bond. I had thought this number would correspond to a still unachieved 186^04 target in the futures contract, but I was way off.  This discrepancy aside, how confident am I that long-term rates will fall to 0.73%? Very. Drop by the Rick's Picks Trading Room sometime if you're curious about how often these high-confidence predictions hit the bullseye. Here's a link to a free two-week trial that doesn't require a credit card. Liquidity Is a Coward If long-term rates are in fact headed well below 1%, it would imply that a deep economic slump is coming. As for stocks, Doug thinks the eager buyers that have powered the bull market for 11 years are about to vanish from the scene. 'Liquidity is a coward', he notes, recalling an observation frequently tied to Ray Devoe.  A article on the subject at Nasdaq.com explains: "Money will flow to where it is best treated. If the

Nothing like a little QE chatter to trigger a buying rampage on Wall Street. Powered by freaked-out bears getting hit increasingly with margin calls as the day wore on, Monday's short-squeeze panic drove the biggest one-day gain in stock market history. Don't fight the Fed, as the saying goes, and today's record-breaker reminded us why.  Although a deep global recession appears inevitable, we'd be the last to get in the way of this stampede. And not until the last, foolhardy bear has been gutted and disemboweled will we suggest sallying forth to bet cautiously against the banksters. For the moment, however, the 'easing' chorus has grown so shrill over the last few days that the central bank is all but certain to accommodate with a quick 50-basis-point drop in administered rates. However, never before has the idea of stimulus been stripped so bare of the pretense that it will help the broad economy. It will help inflate assets, is all, so that the resulting glut of funny money can float everyone's boat -- perhaps even the working man's paycheck. Or so the theory goes. But it's a stretch to think the stock market can recover to new record highs as it has done reliably for more than a decade, or even merely tread water, just because the central bank is about to shave 50 basis points from the federal funds rate. Shares would need to stay afloat in the face of a steep earnings downturn that could stretch into autumn and the holiday season. Some of the biggest companies in the world have already warned that revenues will take a big hit from the pandemic. 'Radioactive' Chinese Will the stock market be so feisty when Americans trying to avoid contagion shun restaurants, concerts and movie theaters, as well as airplanes,

Because we took profits on 75% of our initial position on the way up, last week's horrific plunge still left us with a more-than-nominal profit. Our effective cost basis was $24.32, and I'll suggest exiting on the opening. I'd originally planned to gut it out in order to make the point that 'mechanical' entries are easy to execute and work well, especially when price action turns violent. However, the more important goal was to provide an absolute no-brainer trade to pay for your subscription, even if you've never done anything but lurk in the chat room. Assuming GDX gets even slight lift on the opening from Sunday night's strong rally in bullion, you should come away with a profit of around $200. I may suggest jumping in again if and when GDX falls to the green line, as it well may. Please stay closely tuned, especially if you've never made a dime on other trading services. _______ UPDATE (Mar 2, 11:47 a.m.): Based on this morning's opening price of 27.24, we exited the remainder of our position for a net profit of $292. Many subscribers reported jumping on this one when I recommended it a month ago. I purposely made it simple enough for traders of all levels of experience, and cheap enough to be suitable for accounts as small as $6,000. If you didn't do the trade yourself, you ought to be asking yourself why, since it was the every-once-in-a-while lay-up I promised when you subscribed.

The S&Ps didn't quite reach the 'D' target of the reverse pattern I used to establish a tracking position ahead of last week's stunning fall. The shortfall is bearish, since the way the downtrend obliterated the 3096.68 midpoint support on the way down gave the move a high probability of achieving D. We'll give bulls the benefit of the doubt for now, since short-covering on Friday appeared likely to goose the index even higher this week. We'll also set some alerts to trigger a 'mechanical' short at the red line or perhaps the green.  Its purpose would be to give us a handle on trend strength as SPX works through Hidden Pivot levels of lesser degree. I'll consider the initial tracking position as having been closed out on Friday. The profit on 400 shares would have been around $80,000, assuming the last 25% of the position was covered on the close.

AAPL bounced a spectacular $22 off a low that occurred $2 from the 254 target we'd used to try and nail the bottom of the so-far mini-bear market. That wasn't quite close enough to get long with one of the trick-shot set-ups we use, although it may have helped timing an exit from any puts you held for the ride south. Looking just ahead, we can use the 281.37 target of the rABC pattern shown as a minimum upside objective, but the stock would need to push past 285.65 to generate a strong impulse leg on the hourly chart. The trick for us now will be to avoid underestimating the power of this short squeeze, which will feed on the tendency of fools to do exactly that. _______ UPDATE (Mar 2, 10:32 p.m. EST): The world's smartest money is up to its beady little eyeballs in Apple stock, so shorts don't have a prayer. It's going to be 'Take no prisoners!' all the way up, and the goal will be to jack the stock high enough so that it can attract a new crop of institutional suckers who will think they're getting a bargain on even mild weakness above $300.

You can relax: Bernie doesn’t have a prayer of winning. And neither does Biden. Or Bloomberg. At times it may seem as though one of these guys could actually give Trump a run for his money. Even I thought so for a brief moment. But that’s only because the gaseous delusion that is Bernie has been pumped to nebula-size by a news media and popular culture that cannot  deal with the prospect of four more years of Trump. In the meantime, the term ‘mainstream media’ has become an oxymoron, as the shoddy, shamelessly biased reportage that passes for journalism these days becomes increasingly irrelevant to any seeker of fact or truth. The pathetic remnants of the fish wrap industry are fighting for their lives, trying to survive in a country where most readers would sooner trust the National Enquirer than the New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times. Shriveling Leviathans Desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy, these shriveling leviathans have amped up the ridiculous notion that the 2020 election will be a real contest. That is what newspapers do – try to whip readers into a frenzy. Not this time, though. Try as they may, there’s not enough genuine excitement in the 2020 election to captivate even those being pandered to. Cheering “Ray-rah, Bernie!” is like pretending the Baltimore Orioles could win in October. But coronavirus stories are proving to be a weak alternative, since no one really knows how the pandemic will play out. Uncertainty and ignorance can be stretched only so thin as grist for sensational stories, even by the most inventive creators of headlines. For now, though, each and every new case that surfaces in America is being treated as a national story. “A Belleville woman was hospitalized Monday with suspected coronavirus as local health

The stock market at its most violent this week has been an easy read, just as it was when the tech sector imploded 20 years ago and during the financial collapse of 2007-08.  On the eve of today's memorable carnage the short-term charts glowered with warnings of the Dow's imminent, record-breaking plunge.  I'd predicted as much in commentary sent out the night before, along with targets for the E-Mini S&Ps that caught the exact bottom of one of the best rallies of the year. Subscribers reported getting the profitable ride of their lives in both directions. In the Rick's Picks Trading Room, where actionable ideas are shared freely 24/7, a few of them said they'd had their best day ever. In some cases this involved boarding the rally at the exact low of the first selling climax in the morning, riding it to within an inch of the mid-day peak, and then surfing the subsequent avalanche into the close. This chart shows how a Coney Island kind of day looked to traders and technicians. T-Bonds Say 'Recession' Good technical analysis frees us from the difficult task of having to cull investable facts from all the blather one hears these days about coronavirus and its potential effect on the global economy.  To take one significant example, it's possible to predict with confidence that Treasury Bonds are headed much higher. Here's the chart showing a 186^04 target for T-Bond futures that would equate to a rate on the 30-year of 1.58%. That'd be quite a slide from the current 1.78%, and it suggests the recession threat that everyone will be debating in the months ahead is already baked in the cake. By all means, jot those numbers down and share them with your financial advisor. If he goes all-in on Treasury paper,