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Time for a tone change. This is a tough call, since I've been a hard-core deflationist since the mid-1970s after reading a persuasive book by the late C.V. Myers, and later another, The Great Reckoning, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Myers' thesis was that the endgame for the epic credit blowout of the last 40 years would feature a dollar so strong that all who owed them would be crushed by imploding debt. The implied tsunami of bankruptcies would be even more devastating than the 1930s experience, wiping a dozen zeroes from the global balance sheet. The resulting shortage of dollars would become the catalyst for a Second Great Depression from which it would take a generation or longer to emerge. I still believe this is how things must end. But not now. Trump, who is verging on political omnipotence, clearly favors a weak dollar, and this will hold the coming bust at bay for a while. But the chart suggests the dollar is tough enough to stand up to such moderate debasement as Trump's patriotism and nationalistic pride can abide. I have adjusted my outlook for the dollar accordingly: Look for weakness down to the range 95-100; then, an explosive rally that will end inflation for 60 years. _______ UPDATE (March 14): The Dollar Index has come down hard to the 102.99 'd' support of this pattern.  It is sufficiently clear and compelling that we 'should' see a tradable bounce. If there is none, that would darken my outlook significantly. _______ UPDATE (Mar 21): DXY has bounced 2% from within 20 cents of the 102.99 'hidden' support furnished above. The rally would be more persuasive, however,  if it exceeds several 'external' peaks ranging from 104.32 to 104.67 recorded in the first week of March. Here's the chart. 

Ten-Year yields have been pounding on a 'hidden' support at 4.430% for more than two weeks, presumably getting ready for a drop to exactly 4.242%. A tradable rally from that Hidden Pivot support looks like an 80% bet, but if it eventually gives way, look for a further fall to 3.959% or even 3.675%.  By all means, jot these numbers down if you care about where long-term interest rates are headed, since charts can predict them far more accurately than the dartboard guesses you'll get from Bloomberg's talking heads, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the punditry, Fox Business News, MSNBC et al.

I'm tracking Nvidia shares closely because they can tell us whether China's DeepSeek threatens America's lead in AI development.  The Nasdaq-listed stock got pummeled a month ago when the Chinese revealed they were developing an open-source chatbot that can easily compete on performance and price with the most advanced models offered by OpenAI and other U.S. developers, including Elon Musk. Investors who have bet trillions of dollars on relatively costly solutions were so spooked by the news that they batted NVDA down to $113 not long after it had traded as high as $153. At the time, I said the stock would be an opportune short sale if it bounced from $113 to $140. It did so last week, hitting a recovery high of $143, but I'm no longer so enthusiastic about betting against the stock. It is the chart that has changed my mind, not the aggressive attack on DeepSeek by investors, analysts, pundits and scientists.    They said China had spent considerably more developing the technology than they were acknowledging and that its smarts were extracted from Nivida chips the Chinese had purchased despite a U.S. embargo prohibiting them from getting their thieving hands on certain high-tech hardware. Eating America's Lunch So, who's lying? I doubt we'll get a straight answer from the news media since they are rarely up to the challenge of reporting on developments that seem to upset the status quo. The question remains crucially important nonetheless, since there are literally trillions of dollars of bets and side-bets on the relatively capital-intensive, proprietary approach that American-based companies have taken toward AI development. NVDA's stock chart is probably as good an answer as we'll get, since a graph cannot lie. In that regard, a move to new all-time highs above $153 would imply that America's edge

Ten-Year yields have been pounding on a 'hidden' support at 4.430% for more than two weeks, presumably getting ready for a drop to exactly 4.242%. A tradable rally from that Hidden Pivot support looks like an 80% bet, but if it eventually gives way, look for a further fall to 3.959% or even 3.675%.  By all means, jot these numbers down if you care about where long-term interest rates are headed, since charts can predict them far more accurately than the dartboard guesses you'll get from Bloomberg's talking heads, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the punditry, Fox Business News, MSNBC et al. ______ UPDATE (Mar 1): Rates have slipped beneath my initial target at 4.242%, closing last week at 4.231% off a 4.214% low. This implies that the downtrend is taking hold and could accelerate to fulfill the second target at 3.959%. It has also made achieving that target more likely.  ______ UPDATE (Mar 7, 6:31 p.m.): Yields on the 10-Year Note took a strong bounce last week, but it wasn't sufficient to power through the gap created by Feb 25's downdraft. This will add to the downward weight of the chart, but I'd like to see a two-day close beneath the red line before I infer that more slippage to 3.959 has begun.

The chart shown provides little basis for determining with confidence whether long-term rates have peaked. We'll know better once we've seen the downtrend that began a week ago from 4.81% interact with midpoint Hidden Pivot support at 4.24% (p, shown as a red line).  It would take a decisive penetration of the line on first contact to imply not only that Ten-Year rates have put in an important high near 5%, but that they are headed under 4%, possibly to as low as 3.67%, in 2025. If so, it is likely the U.S. economy will be deep in recession by that time.

GDXJ's punitive reversal last week following a promising rally failed by two ticks to trigger a theoretical sell signal. It will likely happen in the next few days, however, sending this gold-miner ETF down to at least 48.25, the midpoint Hidden Pivot support.  As always, a decisive breach of the support on first contact would imply more slippage down to as low as the pattern's 'd' target -- in this case, 43.66.  That is unlikely, but we'll be better able to assess the odds once we've seen sellers interact with p.

Trump promised everything but a cure for cancer during last Thursday's press conference, and there was no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to helping to shape a better world. Can he do it? One thinks of Teddy Roosevelt, who possessed seemingly limitless energy and zeal for taking on big projects, including building a national park system and the Panama Canal. Trump has big ideas too, and by all evidence the diligence to see them through. It was therefore disappointing that the stock market failed to show much feel-good energy on Friday. Chalk it up to Wall Street's cynicism toward politicians with big ideas other than large tax cuts. Investors, of course, will always be more concerned about Fed monetary policy. This suggests that Trump's successes, if they are going to have a major impact on the economy, will need to align themselves with the central bank's purposely beige and often murky agenda. For the present, however, any wonk, talking head or left-tilting economist is unlikely to 'get' Trump. Will the mainstream media, the political left, the academy, and a popular culture shaped by babbling ideologues like George Clooney, Jimmy Fallon, and Whoopi Goldberg eventually come around? it is encouraging that Meta's Zuckerberg was the first celebrity from the business world to kiss Trump's ring/ass. Although Zuck's $440 million gift to local election boards indisputably stuffed enough ballot boxes to swing the 2020 election to Biden, it was just business. He has demonstrated that he will sleep with anybody, including Trump, if the payoff is big enough. Facebook shares went vertical after Zuckerberg's White House visit shortly after the election, presumably because Wall Street sensed the company's karma was coming into alignment with Trump's America. The same could be said of Tesla's shares, as trust and friendship between Musk and

A 3040.90 rally target proffered here earlier remains viable, although we should be prepared for a possible stall at 2927.40, a 'secondary' Hidden Pivot. If buyers fist-pump their way through it, that would firm the case for a follow-through to at least 3040.90. The target might not work precisely because of the pattern's murky origins in a clutter of possible starting points. It is good enough for government work, however, and has kept us on the right side of the trend even when bullion was getting slammed by the white-shoe hoodlums who run the show. The ascent to 3040.90 could be relatively steep, since the breakout two weeks ago blew the cover of central banks and others who had been quietly accumulating gold after it stalled in November and traded in a range for several months.

GDXJ remains an odds-on bet to reach the 54.92 Hidden Pivot target shown. This was all but ensured when bulls gapped through the midpoint Hidden Pivot (p) at 48.39 on January 30. An additional sign of strength is that there have been no selloffs on the daily chart to enable a 'mechanical' buy at either x (the green line) or p (the red line). Only true believers would be on board at this point, since the steepness of the rally has left doubters choking on dust. The 54.92 target should be regarded as a minimum objective, since using the lower point 'A' available at 40.26 (August 5) yields an alternative projection to 57.17.  The pattern has a 'secondary' Hidden Pivot at 53.34 where you should be prepared for at least slight resistance and perhaps even a tradable pullback. Long-term investors should consider covered-writes there.