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What a shocker! Crude actually did something last week, falling so steeply that experts were left scratching their heads. I don't much care about the reasons they're giving for the collapse, since their comments would have been credible only if they had been broached before it occurred.  Putting aside speculative blather, the futures look bound for the 57.03 target shown. This is a composite chart, so that number is unlikely to work perfectly. However, it will be good enough for government work -- and for the pleasure of motorists who will always welcome lower prices at the pump.

With a longstanding rally target at 57.17 and a sell signal not far below, we had no trouble getting out of the way of last week's massacre. The vicious shakedown was engineered by the usual sleazeballs, but we'll have the luxury of rebuilding our inventory at prices that suit us, and without time constraints or pressure.  The 49.42 'd' target of the pattern shown will be a good place to start, although it's conceivable the correction could bring GDXJ down to as low as 44.87 (a=55.58 on 10/22) before it turns around. That pattern implies that a run-up now to 55.17 would trigger a 'mechanical' short, so we should be on our guard against signs of premature exuberance. _______ UPDATE (Apr  8, 1:32 p.m.):  Accumulating stock at the 49.42 correction target flagged above was a winning play, since GDXJ bottomed 9  cents below that number the next day before trampolining to 53.83.

With no comment or explanation, I proffered the pattern shown over at Golden Meadow just to demonstrate that, for all its histrionics, Bitcoin is our little bitch, as easy to nail as half-inch balsa. The pattern is a uniquely gnarly rABC, and I won't go into how I chose point 'a'. Be that as it may, it has already triggered three quick, $6,000 winners and should continue to do wo reliably as long as the 'c' low holds.  The three trades include a conventional buy at the green line, a short at the red line, and a mechanical buy at the green line. It is currently on a fourth signal, a buy at the green line, but the rally will need to reach p=88,609 again before the trade can be declared a winner. Interest in Bitcoin at Rick's Picks appears to be almost nil, but I am here if you need me.

A word of advice if you're looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media's cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump's lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I've been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait. You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the "experts" who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don't they know he's wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media's knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump's Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg's sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it's ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle-jerk. Christmas Glide Path Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low

Here's some cold water on the notion that Trump's radical trade policies could help bring about an economic golden era. I'd written here last week that punitive tariffs might be the only medicine strong enough to jolt the world into doing honest business. Foreign manufacturers would leap to relocate their plants to the U.S. in order to avoid the levies and also greatly reduce delivery costs.   There's just one problem with this, wrote a subscriber, Ben, who posts regularly on the site. "I don’t think Trump has the time to re-shore to any great extent. He has 3.5 years, but this is something that takes more than two presidential terms to accomplish." Indeed, as ambitious as Trump's plans are, there is no political consensus to implement them." Even some Republicans are resisting the idea of re-shoring.   Bear Threat   An additional problem is that a shake-up of global trade could trip stocks into a bear market, weakening the ability of middle class Americans to cope with the enormous cost of putting America first. High tariffs cannot but dramatically inflate the price of cars, appliances and other big-ticket items that Americans depend on from sources outside the U.S. Is Trump just bluffing? Even if he is, investors don't have the luxury of counting on it.   A more immediate and intractable problem Trump will face is the ongoing collapse of commercial real estate. In dollar terms it is a huge number, and yet no big cities have taken commensurate writedowns. Instead, they all seem to be hoping that a massive economic upswing brings workers back to their offices. One San Francisco developer bet a hundred million dollars on this, buying an 11-story building for $40 million that had been assessed at $140 million. He plans to put $50 million

Because this symbol is overdue for a correction, I've arbitrarily drawn a chart that could signal the start of one if GDXJ falls to 55.17. That would trigger a theoretical 'sell' signal with downside potential to at least 51.74.  An additional 'hidden' support at 55.63 could provide a tradable bounce. The supports should not give way easily, and that is why we can safely assume Mr Market means business if they do.

I've reinstated MSFT as our top market bellwether because other symbols that have served in that role look too punk to count on. The shares of Apple, which couldn't innovate its way out of a wet paper bag, will be extremely vulnerable when recession hits, while Bitcoin's canny handlers lack the guts to lead stocks higher. DaBoyz turns the cryptos loose to run wild whenever the broad averages climb sharply, but this is just go-along price action incapable of exciting traders' animal spirits. 'Doc' Copper doesn't work, either. Although it looks capable of reaching $6.18 a pound, a 20% climb from current levels, that scenario is not believable in the context of a global boom in manufacturing. More likely, it would be a blowoff for the copper-intensive EV story, which has become less compelling as electric-vehicle resale values have plummeted. For better or worse, we should focus on Microsoft to gauge the strength and staying power of this nascent bear rally. With a little more than $3 trillion capitalization, the software behemoth is the third-largest company in the world, just behind Apple and Nvidia. Unlike those companies, however, Microsoft is not especially vulnerable to an economic downturn, since such a large portion of the firm's nearly $200 billion in revenues is derived from recurring subscriptions to cloud computing facilities, personal and business software. Microsoft will remain a cash cow in the hardest imaginable times, even if the supply of dollars implodes in a deflationary bust. A 'Buy' Signal So what does MSFT's chart say?  Last week, a rally tripped a theoretical buy signal at 394.56 that implies the stock will reach a minimum 412.20. We should expect a tradable pullback from that number, but if a nasty relapse follows instead, taking out the March 11 low at 376.91, that would

Traders spent the entire week screwing the pooch, demonstrating that bulls and bears are equally clueless at the moment. It suggests that the coming bear rally will likely be a tedious affair, about as much fun to watch as the 1893 New Orleans matchup between two determined lightweight boxers, Andy Bowen and Jack Burke. It went 110 rounds before the ref mercifully called it a draw. Will the SEC step in and freeze stocks at a permanently high plateau? My hunch is that the longer this slugfest lasts, the more likely the broad averages will make marginal new highs before a full-blown, take-no-prisoners bear emerges. More immediately, however, you should use 5845.75, the Hidden Pivot target shown in the chart (inset), as a minimum upside objective when the new week begins. It will remain viable as long as traders, entranced by Wall Street's fun-house mirror, don't stop themselves out with a stupid, pointless feint beneath last week's 5650.75 low.

The Trump wild card has made it especially difficult to bet on the stock market. Even cynics can't say for sure that his radical agenda will not eventually produce an economic golden era capable of pushing the Dow average to 100,000 or higher. In just two short months, the president has crushed wokeness and racial quotas, enabling most Americans to feel good about themselves for the first time since the 1950s. And although fraud and corruption in government will always be with us because that's where the money is, it's possible Trump has returned America to a path that will reinvigorate just leadership and honest institutions that we can be proud of.  As for the tariffs, they are arguably the only medicine strong enough to jolt the world into doing honest business.  The kicker is that they cannot but entice foreign manufacturers to expand their operations in the U.S.  (If you have read this far and TDS rage has begun to churn your stomach, here's some advice:  Blow it out your shorts.) The graph above is intended as a do-it-yourself tool for gauging the power of the bear rally that began on March 13.  The implication is that no short-squeeze will exceed the 5976.00 target (4) of the pattern shown. If it does, then permabears had better not get in the way of the thrust to new record highs that is likely to follow. I have drawn the chart according to the proprietary rules of the Hidden Pivot Method.  This picture exhibits a 'reverse ABCD pattern' that I have watched in action 100,000 times and studied for nearly 30 years. Trust me, it works. Pattern Is 'Confirmed' Its accuracy and reliability were confirmed last week when the booster stage of the presumptive bear rally stalled precisely at 5768 (2), a