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I restored AAPL to the core list last week with reservations. The company is a dim also-ran in the AI race, having only recently found a partner in Google, the creator of Gemini. There is also the chance Musk will eventually make iPhones obsolete. He keeps insisting that Starlink has no phone on the drawing board, but he's probably just trying to screw with Tim Cooke's head.  When the XPhone finally arrives, with superior hardware and no monthly service charge, that will be it for Apple.  Concerning the chart, AAPL's steep slide on Friday triggered a 'mechanical' buy at the green line (259.09), stop 243.41. Ordinarily, we're supposed to feel queasy about excuting such trades, since they will always be going against the trend. In this case, however, I will recommend it only to Pivoteers who know how to fashion a reverse-pattern trigger that risks no more than $3.00 per share theoretical on the entry.  It should be good for a one-level ride to p=274.76 if it works. _______ UPDATE (Feb 20): The long position suggested from 259.09 ended the week $5 in-the-black. Continue to hold for a shot at 274.76, or even 306.09. You can raise the stop-loss to 255.81. 

Subscribers who used the 128.13 bottoming target I posted in the chat room at 12:35 could have gotten an $8 ride from just above Friday's low.  The rally left GDXJ hovering within a bearish pattern that projects to as low as 110.79. There is no way to judge the likelihood of this, nor will there be until we've seen how sellers interact with the midpoint hidden Pivot support at 126.20. The trend could also go the other way, blowing out the 141.60 high that forms the pattern's point 'C'.  For now, though, GDXJ remains on a theoretical sell signal from x=133.90 that was showing a small loss when the week ended.

The 'mechanical' short recommended from the green line (x= 5.9093) last week narrowly survived getting stopped out when a midweek upthrust failed to surpass the conventional pattern's point 'C' high.  On Friday, the futures fell far enough to touch the midpoint Hidden Pivot support (p=5.7035), where we customarily take profits on half a position. If you are still in the trade, plan on taking an additional 25% off at p2=5.4978, the seondary Hidden Pivot, saving the remaining 25% for a possible ride down to D=5.2920. Since there has been little discussion of the trade in the chat room, I will likely replace 'Doc' Copper soon with another symbol as part of a continuing.

AI hubris has got itself in a bind, trapped between two conflicting stories, neither of which seems likely to end well. One story has the boys in the billionaire's club throwing untold sums of money at a technology that seems increasingly unlikely to produce commensurate returns. The other story has been threatening whole sectors of the economy with creative destruction: software development, financial, legal and accounting services, money management, entertainment and even trucking. Each day, there's a menacing new headline about some industry whose workers, mostly white-collar, are about to be replaced by thinking machines. The recent trucking news concerned the logistical problem of routing vans so that they are filled with cargo all the time. Artificial intelligence has taken on this challenge, squeezing out inefficiencies in ways that human workers could not have imagined just a few years ago.  The shares of companies that do this work crashed last week, victims of AI's Grim Reaper. It won't end there, either, since driverless fleets of trucks are coming, and soon. Humans will be needed to load and unload them -- that is, until Musk robots come along to relieve them of their jobs. A Chimpanzee Reflex Whenever creative-destruction stories hit the tape, the chimpanzees entrusted with America's 401(k) savings instantly dump the shares of all companies likely to be impacted. The trouble is that the list is growing so fast that it has become hard to imagine an area of the economy that will not be affected. We are talking mainly about job losses, and there seems to be no end to the number and variety of positions in AI's crosshairs. So what's an investor to do?  Our money is on Musk, arguably the only player with a strategy imaginative enough to encompass and integrate AI's myriad possibilities while also

I've returned AAPL to the list, since MSFT's dirge is no longer representative of the animal spirits that have been moving the markets higher. The chart shown leaves room for a possible double top, but I've selected a lower point 'A' in order to project a likely move to new record highs. The move through p=274.76 is not quite powerful enough to guarantee this, but it will offer 80% odds if the stock can close for two more consecutive days above p=274.76. At the point, the secondary Hidden Pivot (p2=290.42) would become my minimum upside objective. If a pullback to the green line (x=259.09) were to occur first, it would offer a stellar opportunity for a 'mechanical' buy, stop 242.00.

I'll spare you the boring details, but the pattern shown, wih a 202.52 target that lies 20% below, has everything I look for. It tripped a conventional sell signal when it touched the green line last Wednesday, and the choppy downtrend since should be presumed bound for a minimum 118.05 over the near term. If that midpoint Hidden Pivot support is easily exceeded to the downside, it would portend more slippage to as low as D=102.52. We'll let price action speak for itself, but take it as a bullish sign if buyers push above C=133.57 before p=118.05 is touched.

[The following commentary was written by Steve Houck,a longtime investor in bullion and knows the markets well.  He is also a friend and a former business partner.  RA ] Looking at the froth in silver, it became apparent it was time to rotate from overvalued to undervalued once again.  Selling precious-metal ETFs like SLV and AGQ meant cash was available for the next trade, but where to go?  While silver has been on a relentless tear, the miners have only grudgingly moved higher.  Yes, there have been good moves in many of the miners, but quite a few trade with a ball and chain weighing them down in the form of fear.  That's because the last two times silver surpassed $50, in 1980 and 2011, it collapsed and went into long, grinding bear markets.  Silver mining stocks get caught up in this because the public doesn't believe prices will hold, and that silver will fall back to earth. But what if the new floor is $55 to $70, and not the $15 to $25 range that obtained for decades?  This silver run-up is different because it’s about one thing:  physical metal.  Just look what;s happening: China, the U.S. and the rest of the world are hoarding and trying to secure metals. That puts the miners in the catbird seat, because they produce and control the supply.  Their shares, however, are still being priced as though silver were selling in the  $20s even though it averaged close to $50 for the entire fourth quarter 2025.  The miners wil start to report earnings next week, beginning on February 16.  Because many of them will announce blowout earnings, now is the time to capitalize! How to Play It How to play this?  Over the last two decades of investing in silver miners, the

A further fall to the 404.67 target would represent at 27% decline since the stock sputtered out in October at 553.72, just an inch shy of new record highs. The pattern doesn't quite qualify as an ominous, island-reversal top, but it doesn't take a chartist to feel the weight of the dome the stock has traced out over the last nine months.  The pattern is simple and obvious, but sufficiently compelling for us to infer that MSFT is far more likely to hit D before C=493.50, if it ever does.  This is the fourth most valuable company in the world, behind Nvidia, Google, and Apple, implying that the stock's decline has deflated the global 'wealth effect' by a large amount.  See this week's commentary (above) for a further discussion of this. _______ UPDATE (Feb 8): The stock has looked so awful that I am substituting AAPL on the 'touts' list.  The chart shows a logical path down to D=376.88. The stock can be 'mechanically' shorted at the red line (p=408.24), stop 418.70.  ________ UPDATE (Feb 14):  We usually do 'mechanical' shorts at the green line, but I made a rare exception this time, recommending that you get short at the red line (p=480.24) with a 418.70 stop-loss. The trade would have produced a loss of $1024 per round lot. Had we shorted at the green line (x=423.92)  as is customary, the trade would have worked out nicely, since the stock made a top at  423.68 just ahead of a so-far plunge of $22.67.  The 376.99 downside target remains valid in any case and should be used as a minimum objective for now.

The chart is similar to the one I've drawn in Gold, with a 0.625 retracement serving as a target for Silver's breathtaking correction. It came off a record high on Thursday that missed a 122.215 Hidden Pivot target I'd drum-rolled by a millimeter.  Friday's bounce left the futures sitting nearly $3 above the 50% line, but if the correction is going to match Gold's, a retracement to 64.18 is needed.  Be prepared to bottom-fish there with a 'camo' trigger, since 64.18 is not going to be on the radar of most traders, derived as it is from a low recorded last April that is idiosyncratic, although not obscure. ______ UPDATE (Feb 2, 7:55 a.m.):  I've switched the view, since trying to synch the charts of gold and silver grew confusing. This picture affords 'safe passage' to at least d=91.285, a Hidden Pivot that lies  $6.80 above. If it shows little resistance, I will adjust by lowering point 'a' to produce a higher target.  In the meantime, a pullback to the green line (x=76.221) can be bought 'mechanically' with a 71.190 stop-loss.  That implies more than $5000 of entry risk per contract, so the trade is recommended only to subscribers able to craft a 'camouflage' trigger. _______ UPDATE (Feb 4, 10:59 p.m.): The suggested trade racked up a monster profit of $75,320 per contract for anyone who boarded at 76.221 and exited two days later at my target, 91.285.  What happened next should not have surprised subscribers: the futures wafted slightly (47 cents) higher, then fell moments later into a hellish dive that took them all the way back down to, so far, 73.415, a tad below the trade-entry price.