Last week's strong start laid an egg as expected, leaving yet more paint to dry on an indisputably bullish picture. The constipated price action cries out for a swoon beneath the three lows near 2330 that have occurred since April just to clear the air. We'd be 'voodoo' buyers down near 2351 in any case, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking the futures would do us such a kindness. In the meantime, they remain tradable on intraday signals that have been plentiful, even in bullion's increasingly tedious holding pattern. Stay tuned to the chat room if you care.
Subscribers evidently made hay with a 27.41 correction target I'd flagged here that caught the low of a nearly $2 bounce within four cents. So now what? The bounce wasn't quite sufficient to generate an impulse leg on the daily chart, so any trading opportunities in either direction will necessarily come from the intraday charts. My hunch is that a next buy signal will materialize with a dip into the 'discomfort' zone bounded by prior lows at, respectively, 27.45 (7/29) and 26.55 (5/2). ______ UPDATE (Aug 9, 1:50 p.m.): Another bullseye: Last week's low at 26.505 occurred in the exact middle of the range I'd flagged above. Spartacus was the only subscriber to mention this, but please let me know in the chat room if you used the forecast (as he evidently did) to get long near the bottom. If I hear from enough of you, I will establish a tracking position. ______ UPDATE (Aug 11, 2:25 a.m.): Assuming you are long four contracts from around 26.51, take profits on half at 27.80, then deploy an 'impulsive' stop-loss on the 30-minute chart. This implies stopping yourself out of the remainder of the position if a plunge exceeds two prior lows without an upward correction. At the moment, this would locate the stop-loss at 26.970, just beneath the 'external' low recorded on August 8 at 9:30 a.m. EDT. Make this order o-c-o with a single-contract offered to close at 28.610. _______ UPDATE (Aug 12, 1:59 p.m. EDT): Profit-taking has lowered our cost basis to 25.22 for the two contracts that remain. Continue to offer one of them to close at 28.61, tying both to an o-c-o stop-loss at 27.280. ______ UPDATE (Aug 14, 2:33 a.m. EDT): Raise the stop-loss to 27.50. _______ UPDATE (Aug 15, 3:24 a.m.): Subscribers who exited on the stop suggested above
September Crude loitered for four days at a 76.26 Hidden Pivot correction target identified here earlier, then crushed it with a running dive that followed a vicious head-fake. The subsequent low occurred almost precisely at the too-obvious trendline shown. Since every oil trader in the galaxy will have used this feature to bottom-fish, it is unlikely to work precisely. However, sellers are going to have difficulty turning such a compelling 'structural' support to mush, so look for oil's so-far 12% slide to end hereabouts. _______ UPDATE (Aug 5, 12:35 p.m.): The slide did not end at the support. Is oil perhaps discounting the possibility that the stock market's plunge has set in motion an economic collapse?
The futures bounced last Thursday from within a hair of the green line (x=5421.21), triggering a textbook 'mechanical' buy within a very un-textbook ABCD pattern. It's a credible signal, however, given the initial hesitation at the red line on the way up, and the stall precisely at p2=5728.14. Even so, I am wary of the possibility that this so-far moderate bounce will fail to achieve the D target at 5881.60, effectively ending the bull market begun in 2009. The September contract is a lead-pipe cinch to reach p, though, so we'll put further speculation aside and focus on trading the remaining 75 points of 'ceertain' upside.
While the broad averages were getting pounded last week, bitcoin's deft handlers were displaying the kind of brash confidence that all but guarantees significantly higher prices -- and soon, especially if stocks continue to recover. Use p=71,394 as a minimum upside projection for the near term, and expect this hoax to punch through this Hidden Pivot with little difficulty. That would shorten the odds of a finishsing stroke to the 89,029 target flagged here earlier.
September Silver took a tentative bounce from the launcher last Thursday, but it will need to close above the pink line at 28.82 to be considered airborne. The reverse pattern shown is both compelling and obscure, so d=27.41 stood to work precisely. Is the reversal from 14 cents above that Hidden Pivot sufficiently precise to infer the downtrend is spent? Probably. But if the futures relapse this week, be ready to bottom-fish voodoo 27.05 with a trigger interval as tight as a dime. ______ UPDATE (Jul 29, 6:13 p.m.): The futures relapsed, all right, but only enough to get them even closer to my 27.41 target. Is the new low at 27.45 close enough? The question is no longer worth pondering, but you should be long if you used the suggested trigger interval, with a partial profit from the 60-cent move that has occurred so far.
Crude's so far $1.35 bounce from within 7 cents of the 76.26 target I'd flagged suggests the rally is likely to get legs, so don't be fooled if this vicious little sonofabitch fakes a low beneath Friday's 76.19 bottom before it takes off. This could set up a 'counterintuitive' trigger for Pivoteers who are familiar with the technique, which is the forerunner of the reverse-pattern set-up. Since no forecast should be chiseled in stone, let's remain open to the possibility that the low will be broken decisively. If that occurs, assume DaBoy are fixing to crush quotes.
Last week's correction has further to go before buyers could step in without risking much. A pullback to the green line (x=5422) would trigger a 'mechanical' buy, although there are no guarantees we'll be gifted with such a bargain price. More interestingly, neither can there be any guarantees that the next big rally will reach the 5881 target shown in the chart. Had the uptrend impaled p=5575 a month ago on the way up, a finishing stroke to 5881 would be more or less asssured. However, price action at p was muffled, and it took fully three weeks before buyers were able to push past it decisively. That is a cautionary sign, even in a bull market that has been as strong and steady as this one.
Bertie is a lock-up to reach the 69,161 target shown, but it will need to close for two consecutive weeks above 71,395 to put an 89,029 'D' target in play. It goes with this pattern, and it is the highest projection I've identified that is tied to Hidden Pivot levels. It is curious that bitcoin rose so sharply in a week that featured heavy selling in the S&Ps and the tech stocks. I can't imagine that the King of Cryptos would be considered a safe-haven asset, but if so, then perhaps the End of Times is nearer than we'd thought.
Three successive, marginally higher tops in the last three months have made this vehicle more than a little tiresome. The futures will need to come down to at least p=2352.00 of this latest, bullish pattern before we can get a confident read on how long the tedium might last before gold blasts off toward 3000. We might be able to determine trend strength accurately as early as Monday or Tuesday by looking at patterns going in either direction on the lesser charts, so stay tuned.
