TLT's tortuous ascent still looks bound for 105.49, a Hidden Pivot target derived from a bull cycle that dates back to October 2023, when this proxy for the long bond was trading around 82. A corresponding fall in long-term rates would bring them down to 3.64%. The trajectory of both charts suggests the targets could be reached by late this year or early in 2025. It is logical to infer that a recession would be well under way with rates at those levels since the Fed could not conceivably force them down by purchasing massive amounts of Treasury debt. Foreigners could do the job for them if there is a global flight to safety for reasons beyond imagining,
I've hauled out a long-term chart commensurate with the ones displayed alongside this week's gold and silver touts. It shows GDXJ to be slightly ahead of the futures in a precious-metals bull market that has years to run. A close look at the rightmost bar reveals that it has slightly pierced the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance of a pattern projecting to 72.73, a 45% move from here. With one more day to go in September, there's a good chance the monthly close will be above p. A second close above the pivot in October would shorten the odds that 72.73 will be achieved, but so would an upthrust to 54 or higher. That target is not the highest possible using the monthly chart; a reverse-pattern objective of 111.59 is arguable, using a= 84.72 from 2/26/10.
The Dollar Index is breaking down following a six-week struggle to hold above 100. Support came more precisely at the 100.57 Hidden Pivot midpoint of the pattern shown, a nearly two-year downtrend that portends more downside to as low as 93.78. Since the dollar was barely able to hold the support with Powell unwilling to ease, it is logical for it to be weakening now that he has decided to go with the global flow. He can't possibly win the devaluation Olympiad, nor would he attempt it. But he has doubtless calculated that the dollar will not get kicked too savagely as long as so many other countries are trashing their currencies.
Two days of hard selling pushed the November contract down to the green line (x=66.97), triggering a 'mechanical' buy (stop 64.41) that should be good for a one-level ride, at least, to p=69.52. With pump prices down at $3 or even lower, exchange quotes should start to firm, since that's what they've done for years every time motorists got relief for a few weeks. Election-year tampering could suppress whatever rally is coming, however, along with extraordinary complacency in the face of possible war in the Middle East or Europe.
Expect stocks to continue their heedless waft into outer space until the election. They would not likely do so if investors even remotely imagined Kamala Harris might win. James Kunstler provided the most succinct reason we've heard for why this is not going to happen: "The people in this land are finally sick of a faceless blob ruling madly from the shadows," he wrote in the current edition of Clusterfuck Nation. "Mr. Trump has become a national father figure, a titanic offense to a party run by women with daddy issues and to their Marxist allies dogmatically bent on destroying the family (along with every other institution). As it happens, countries need fathers, both actual and symbolic. What a surprise!" So what about polls that show Harris and Trump neck-and-neck in some swing states? Even ostensibly conservative news outlets such as Fox and the Wall Street Journal have been reporting this as though the data were authentic. My guess is that the editors and news gatherers have all been overwhelmed by the nation's left-tilting news media into believing polls that have been massaged with poor sampling, misleading questions and purposeful misinterpretation. In reality, the believers are like the audience assembled on a barge to witness David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear. Although some in the audience would swear this happened, it didn't; the barge had simply been repositioned while a curtain was raised to obscure a large swath of the horizon. 8%-10% More Believable Although the magician eventually revealed how he did the trick, the New York Times et al. will not be called upon to explain how they levitated Ms. Harris, since she is going to lose by 20 million votes. That's a realistic number if forecaster Martin Armstrong is right, as he often is about so
The glue-sniffers who pushed the S&Ps an inch above July's record high on Thursday, only to recede from this precipice like frightened sandpipers from a rising tide, may never realize this was just the bunch of them staring at themselves in Wall Street's fun-house mirror. This coy behavior was so predictable that we might wonder whether all of them made a bundle coming in short on Friday. Of course not. But they are certain to spend the coming week bumping into each other like a throng of mental patients locked in a small room. I'll be watching their burlesque over the next few days, so stay close to the chat room and your email Notifications if you want a seat at ringside.
I've given the 449.52 rally target so much ink that it's probably time to fixate on a higher Hidden Pivot just in case. It lies at 464.76, which, because of its close proximity to July's 468.35 record, should not be expected to show precise stopping power. Still, it will lie in the bowel of what we should regard as the 'discomfort zone', just shy of the bullish breakout that nearly everyone will be expecting, Whatever hysterical price action this causes will assuredly be tradable, since it is all just impulse legs. However, I will be focused more attentively on movement above the old high, since that would create favorable psychological conditions for the kind of bull trap that wants to take everybody down with it.
Crude's stab through the 69.61 midpoint resistance of the pattern shown all but guarantees more upside to at least 74.79. This will once again repeat a cyclical phenomenon that has not failed in years: a bottom in energy quotes whenever prices at the pump fall to $3. A cynic could almost believe oil's tiresome ups and downs are staged by a nefarious cabal to optimize their looting of the world's largest commodity market. Whatever the case, it trades like it's got the heebie-jeebies, an embarrassment not only to those who purport to regulate it, but to civilization itself.
No one mentioned the glow-in-the-dark rickism that had our next rally target at 31.730, below the previous one. Is anyone paying attention? Apparently not, but I'll leave Silver on the list anyway, since, without it, I could no longer promote an affinity between Rick's Picks and bullion traders. The December contract looks bound for the 33.435 target shown, but let's wait till buyers punctures p2=31.798 before we jump to conclusions. Pivoteers, please note: There are some voodoo numbers along the way to get short, if only briefly.
TLT got hit hard last week, all right, but not in the way I'd predicted. The selling followed a feint to 101.39, a few ticks above a peak recorded back in January. Actually, the feint that ended the rally was the second, following another that had occurred a week earlier. Very tricky, indeed. However, the bottom line is that buyers have generated a powerful impulse leg on the daily chart. This means that however hard T-Bonds get wacked in the days and weeks ahead, the weakness should be viewed as corrective. My rally target remains 105.49, as previously given here, and a pullback to 91.88 should be bought aggressively, stop 87.33. A red-line 'mechanical' buying opportunity could also materialize at p=96.42; it would require a stop-loss at 93.39.
