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DaBoyz are putting most of their energy and effort into a relative handful of institutional favorites (aka  "lunatic stocks"), including AAPL, BA, FB, NKE and GOOGL. The goal of the stock market's masters is to waft the broad averages higher using short-covering for fuel, and to distribute as much stock as they can ahead of the next big downdraft. They've been quite successful at it so far, producing a record-breaking January. How long can they keep it up? For at least another 400 Dow points, assuming my forecast for the E-Mini S&Ps pans out. Currently trading for 2717, they look bound for a minimum 2759. This might not prove to be the top of the bear rally, but it could stop the buying spree long enough for us to squeeze off an opportune short.

HUI, the Gold Bugs Index, is close to triggering its first buy signal on the weekly chart in more than two years.  The first proved to be a dud, and it sent this popular trading vehicle into a ratcheting downtrend that would have driven most bulls to the edge of despair.  As a result, skepticism toward the current rally undoubtedly is high. But traders should be prepared  for a pleasant surprise if it touches 177.73, where the buy signal would occur (see inset). At that point we would raise our sights to a 224.34 'midpoint Hidden Pivot' as a minimum upside objective. It is associated with a target at -- better sit down for this -- 317.56 that presumably would usher in a new era for the mining industry. Can you picture a geologist as Time magazine's Person of the Year? Outside of the world of gold bugs, these companies have gotten precious little respect or attention since bullion topped more than seven years ago. This could be about to change.

AAPL looked quite impressive last week. Buyers pushed above a shelf-like 'external' peak from mid-December, refreshing the bullish energy of the hourly chart. And now, how high would the stock have to go to make this short squeeze look capable of achieving new all-time highs above $233? My gut feeling is that it would take a push exceeding the 184.94 peak shown (see inset) to do the trick. That would plant a seed of fatalism in the minds of bears, your editor among them, who expect the rally to fizzle out any day now. I won't pretend to have a crystal ball, and can only suggesting monitoring AAPL's progress, or perhaps lack of it, relative to the peaks shown in the chart. _______ UPDATE (Feb 7, 10:45 p.m. ET): The stock rolled down hard after a rally in the first hour failed to exceed any prior peaks. The weakness would not threaten the still-bullish look of the hourly chart, however, unless it takes the 165.93 low recorded on Feb 1..

The stock market’s masters have been working AMZN and AAPL like a tag team, pressing one into service when the other lacks the energy to goad stocks higher. That surely describes the current dynamic. DaBoyz short-squeezed AAPL for a third straight day, more than offsetting the drubbing AMZN is getting tonight on a downbeat earnings report that has sent the stock plummeting $100 after-hours. The selloff is a brazen shakedown, to judge from the news that caused it. Here, supposedly, is what is ailing Amazon: “Concerns include slowing unit and NA Online growth, slowing subscription/advertising segment growth, gross margin miss, and guidance (likely reflects India issues, lower 3P fees).” What a load of crap! As bearish as my outlook for the stock market is, and has been, this is the kind of ginned-up news that would make me want to buy the stock, not dump it. (In fact, and for your information, AMZN became a “mechanical” buy, in Hidden Pivot parlance, this evening at 1646.15, stop 1591.37.) When Bears Throw in the Towel The way DaBoyz are able to work the two stocks reminds me of how slot-machine “mechanics” in the old days used to “rhythm” two machines simultaneously to extract the maximum payoff from the house. That’s what’s going on with this bear rally, as leadership passes constantly between AMZN, AAPL and a few other institutional workhorses. No one can predict exactly how high the rally will go, but we already know its purpose: to fool the riff-raff into thinking it’s capable of achieving new all-time highs. The Dow and S&Ps aren’t quite there yet, but they will be soon if the wiseguys can get AMZN and AAPL to rise simultaneously. Bulls aren’t the only ones Mr. Market is intent on fooling: Inveterate skeptics like your editor fall in

DaBoyz have harnessed panic-stricken bears to do in minutes what bulls might not have accomplished in a month -- i.e., push a beleaguered Facebook $25 higher without wasting a dime of their own money. I doubt whether even urgent short-covering can spike the stock past the 171.25 target, but we can use it as a minimum upside target for the very near-term nonetheless. Depending on how things open, we might look at expiring puts, tightly stopped, to leverage the target.______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 11:45 a.m.): I bought expiring 165 puts for 0.35, a nickel off their low, when FB topped this morning at 171.68. Several subscribers did likewise when I flagged the opportunity in the chat room. At least one subscriber has already cashed out for a 50% gain on FB's drop to 168.56. I'm holding onto the puts myself for a swing at the fences. _______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 4:41 p.m.): As posted in the chat room at the time, I doubled out on half of the puts when FB sank minutes before the closing bell. The 0.70 I received for the puts will effectively give me a free short position when trading commences Friday morning.  In the meantime, just in case the stock unexpectedly swoons overnight, I've entered a distress bid for stock at 163.70 to lock in a profit on my options. If the order fills I'll be able to short 165 calls risklessly for good measure on the opening, leaving me with a three-sided "conversion."  Every subscriber who bought the puts reported making money on them, although it was not possible to tell how many were still holding a position overnight. If you remained short, consider the stock gambit detailed above.

We've been using a 1775 rally target, but I've raised it to 1810.47 because of the gnarly beauty of the pattern shown. The stock looks like a good bet to reach p=1700.93 at a minimum, but if buyers can push easily past this "hidden" resistance, it would put the target itself in play. If it's achieved -- by no means a certain bet -- the rally would surpass no fewer than three major 'external' peaks on the daily chart, seriously damaging the case for a bear market. This is certainly not what I expect, but we'll keep an open mind and let the charts do the talking.

Well, there you have it: the most brazenly bogus rally in the history of the world. Are these guys good, or what? The fix was in even before Powell declared Wednesday afternoon that the Fed would be "patient." (Now there's a word that is history in the making!) AAPL's and Boeing's handlers had already gotten the jump on the Fed chairman's latest PR mutterance, deftly engineering respective short-covering panics half a day ahead of him. It took patience, skill and perfect timing to push Apple shares into their steepest rally in recent memory, considering this grim backdrop atop the front page of The Wall Street Journal: "Apple's iPhone Troubles Persist". That would be putting it mildly.  Apple helped hook bears by announcing a day earlier that the company's business had "stabilized" and that management believes things are bound to improve. (Cue up a global sigh of relief!) Although the Fed's momentous shift toward "patience" had been baked in the cake for at least a month, that didn't stop the usual bandits and lunatics on Wall Street from acting as though this non-news were a revelation. But repeating it publicly for perhaps the fourth or fifth time still had the desired effect: Stocks went ballistic, the dollar got cheaper and everything seemed right in the investment world. Trump himself would not have changed a word of Powell's speech. Recall that the news media had us believing for a while that the two were philosophical enemies. In fact, they are of a like mind when it comes to providing free money to any prospective inflator of assets who is not in prison. Their only difference is that while Trump lets the behavior of the stock market guide his monetary thinking, Powell pretends it is everything but the stock market's health that he

Yesterday’s commentary suggested keeping a close eye on AAPL because the stock has looked so awful lately. When you catch yourself thinking a stock has nowhere to go but down, that’s when you should prepare for it to explode. Which is exactly what Apple shares did tonight, on news that the company’s earnings have “stabilized”. This morsel of non-news did the job it was designed to do, triggering a  short-covering panic after the close that has pushed AAPL to 164.85 — more than $10 above its intraday low. This works out to a gain totaling more than a billion dollars. It’s safe to say that nearly all of it went into the hands of institutional thimble-riggers who have sought the perfect opportunity to unload this dumpling ahead of its eventual plunge below $100. I won’t rehash all of the problems that have caused AAPL to fall from $233 in early October to a bear-market low so far of  $142. Suffice it to say, the company has no new killer products or apps to offer consumers, and their exorbitantly overpriced iPhones — up to $1500 for the latest model — will face increasingly aggressive competition from Asian manufacturers. A U.S. recession would deliver the coup de grace, turning what until recently had been the world’s most valuable company into a salvage case. Fool’s Gold But any such day of reckoning has been postponed by tonight’s rocket rally. It easily exceeded a prior peak at 162.11 where I’d said the technical picture would turn from full-on bearish to moderately bullish. It will also turn the FAANGs and a few other lunatic stocks feisty enough to push the broad averages higher, perhaps significantly so, for at least the next few days. At some level, a bear market that had begun to look like

Mr. Market seems to be enjoying playing against our expectations more than usual lately. On Friday, for instance, he left us with an ebullient finishing stroke that all but promised even higher prices on Monday. Lo, disappointing earnings from Caterpillar out before the opening set both the company's shares and the broad averages reeling. That's why I'm suggesting paying particular attention to a bullish price benchmark in AAPL (see below). Can the stock possibly attain it? Seems unlikely. But AAPL has looked so bad lately that I can't help thinking it is where Mr. Market will to try to bamboozle us next. We'll be ready if he does.