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The thimble-riggers who control Apple shares have done a brilliant job holding the stock market aloft. Ingeniously engineered short-squeeze rallies in the world’s most valuable stock have helped sustain the illusion that the U.S. economy will somehow muddle through a deepening recession that is still disingenuously described by Biden and his economists as a ‘rough patch’. Unfortunately, factors that are about to bring the stock market and the economy crashing down are firmly in place and inured to happy talk. This is notwithstanding the carnival-midway shenanigans of trade-desk mechanics who are paid not merely to exploit big moves in stocks, but to create them. This they accomplished last Thursday in AAPL to spectacular effect. The company is entering the most challenging retail environment it has faced in more than two decades, but you’d never know it from the way Apple shares faced down a brutal gauntlet of analysts last week that earlier in the day had mauled two FAANG stalwarts, Amazon and the company formerly known as Facebook. With 2023 shaping up for them as a bust, their stocks plunged by 21% and 25% respectively in mere minutes. Apple couched its after-hours announcement more delicately, but only a fool would have ignored the devastating impact that simultaneous recessions in the U.S., Europe and China are about to have on iPhone sales. Fools Rush In Unsurprisingly, enough fools evidently did overlook the deep-purple clouds to provide AAPL’s handlers with perfect conditions to short-squeeze the stock 15% overnight, leaving it significantly higher than before the news. This will give Wall Street a couple more weeks of breathing room to distribute stocks, since, with earnings for the most important corporate giants out of the way, the impact of downbeat reports from hundreds of other, much smaller companies will be muted. The effectiveness of

I hope you'll pardon these two atrociously mixed metaphors, but separately they ring true, at least to me: AAPL, having lost one engine, has leveled off at cruising altitude and looks like it is fixing to screw the pooch indefinitely.  Ordinarily I would say that the weekly chart (see inset) reflects dithering uncertainty, except that the thieves who routinely and mechanistically rig AAPL's price action are never without intentions. Thus would it appear they are planning to hold the stock aloft for as long as possible, massaging it within the approximate range 120-175. Distribution will likely intensify above 160; accumulation, below 150. From a technical standpoint, the irresolute chart follows from the fact that neither the big move down in April-May, nor the steep rally in June-August, generated a true impulse leg on the weekly chart. To be more specific, the last-gasp low bar in mid-June did not exceed an additional 'external' low as required. This typically sets up duels between bulls and bears that can last for a long time. Keep in mind that AAPL remains a perfectly reliable bellwether for the stock market as a whole. The implication is that if my forecast is correct, we are about to experience an extended period of trendlessness. I'd thought the gratuitous swings to nowhere in both directions would persist only until the November elections, but I am now prepared to watch pointless price action continue more or less indefinitely. This would not likely happen if the Democrats were about to win, since that would leave the nation on a slick track to economic ruin and possibly civil war.  Judging from the chart, however, it looks like GOP candidates will prevail. Even though that could conceivably delay the financial implosion that is coming while also driving a stake through the heart

The bullish pattern shown is gnarly enough to work, whether you are trying to nail a short-term top, forecast intraday swings or bottom-fish on pullbacks. It also assumes that the vicious short squeeze in progress at the closing bell on Friday will carry into the new week. That's hardly a given, considering the balky behavior and arrested trends in both directions that have characterized the market during the last couple of months. You can confidently infer that a follow-through to D=3916.75.75 impends if short-covering bears demolish the p=3779.13 resistance Sunday evening.  A one-level pullback thereafter can be used to get long via a 'mechanical' bid, provided you thoroughly understand such set-ups. _______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 9:33 a.m.): Greed got the better of the night shift last night, as it nearly always does, although price action was much nuttier than usual for a Sunday night. It began with a single-bar head-fake on the opening, but it was downhill for the next ten hours. A so-far timid climb began at 5:00 a.m., with predictably low participation. However, all of this did not alter the bullish target, which I am adjusting slightly higher, to 3917.50, nor did it affect the usefulness of the pattern. A one-level pullback will still set up a 'mechanical' buy with a good chance of generating a profit. The overnight low at 3736.50 failed to do this -- i.e., missed the green line (3711.06) -- by 25 points, but a 'sloppy seconds' entry remains viable. Here's a visual summary. _______ UPDATE (Oct 27, 6:07 p.m.): It is bearish that ES missed my 3916 rally target by 20 points, or 0.5%, but remarkable nonetheless that it is holding up fairly well amidst today's FAANG carnage. ES has recouped half of the engineered, after-the-bell downdraft. This is pure distribution sleaze, but it

There's no compelling reason to trust Friday's strong upthrust, but because it was robustly impulsive on the hourly chart, we can't afford to ignore it either.  I'd suggest staking out a tentative long position using the reverse pattern shown. The point 'c' high is just a placeholder at the moment, and you should raise it if the futures make a higher top on Sunday night. Buying should be done at the resulting midpoint Hidden Pivot (currently at 1648.50), using either a stop-loss no wider than 1.00 point, or with an rABC pattern on the lesser bar charts that risks even less theoretically. If you want to paper-trade in order to improve your feel for reverse-pattern set-ups, please note that the conventional stop-loss lie exactly 4.90 points beneath the entry price, predicated on a rally target $10 above it. _______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 12:28 a.m. EDT): A false start and raggedy price action have altered the prospectus for this evening, offering better odds for bottom-fishing D=1646.30 of this pattern than any Hidden Pivot level above it, including the already well-chewed 'p'. ______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 4:56 p.m.): Cancel, the trade, since the futures have been acting like they know D=1646.30 is there. A bullish bias is warranted nonetheless, but price action has been too squirrelly for me to offer day-in-advance trading guidance. _______ UPDATE (Oct 26, 11:53 p.m.): Today's spike to the red line (p=1678.80) confirmed this bullish pattern and its D target at 1736.40. A decisive push past it in the next day or two would shorten the odds that D will be reached. 

Buyers' wilding spree on Friday was even more impressive than in gold. Accordingly, you should use the bullish 'reverse pattern' shown to get long with risk very tightly controlled. Buying should be done on a pullback to p=19.03, stop 18.90, much just as I've advised in December Gold. However, please be aware that you can cut risk even more by setting up an rABC trigger on a lesser chart, with the 'c' low anchored within two cents of p. The midpoint pivot shown is tentative and would change if December Silver moves higher Sunday evening, but the 'conventional' stop-loss would remain fixed nonetheless at 12 cents below the final p used for entry. This trade is easier than it sounds, but it is recommended only for subscribers who have been attending Wednesday tutorial sessions and understand how rABC set-ups work. _______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 5:02 p.m.): See my chatroom posts and chart from 9:55 a.m. Tuesday morning. _______ UPDATE (Oct 27, 7:24 p.m.): December Silver appears to be dragging itself kicking and screaming toward the 20.85 Hidden Pivot target shown, but what a mess!

The futures would trigger an appealing 'mechanical' short if this bounce hits x=88.95. The 'conventional stop-loss would be at 92.24, implying a little more than $13,000 of theoretical entry risk on four contracts. That's why I am recommending this trade only if you know how to fashion a 'camouflage' trigger to reduce that to $600 or less theoretical per contract. I'd suggest paper-trading otherwise so that you can see for yourself not only how 'camouflage' works, but how consistently. ______ UPDATE (Oct 24, 6:25 p.m.): Cancel the trade, since the futures are taking too long to reach the green line (x=88.95). There's not much to say about the trend, since there hasn't been a trend in more than three months.

The dollar tripped a 'mechanical' buy signal on last week's pullback to the green line (see inset), but it came off a high that fell short of our sweet spot midway between p and p2, and that's why I'm not recommending aggressive action. My gut feeling is that the signal will produce at least a one-level move from x to p, but my still-bullish long-term forecast for the dollar implies that the bounce, if there is one, should do better than that. Alternatively, if weakness stops out the pattern's 'C' low at 110.06, that would suggest a more significant correction lies ahead before DXY can blast off for D=117.16 or perhaps higher. _______ UPDATE (Oct 27, 12:16 a.m.): I expect the Dollar Index to take a potentially tradable bounce from exactly 109.28, the 'D' target of this pattern. 

Buyers impaled the green line (x=29.26) with such force on Friday that I've used a conventional pattern to project higher prices. Critical resistance lies at p=30.90, and we'll need to see how bulls handle it before we extend the bullish outlook beyond mere conjecture. If they can close GDXJ above it, however -- ideally on the same day they've hit it -- we could expect more upside to at least D=34.17.

The seemingly strong rally that ended the week merely balanced out three days of bland weakness that had preceded it. In the S&P 500, the upthr ust steepened by the hour but ultimately failed to surpass any important prior peaks. The bear seems out to challenge bulls and bears alike with its obviousness. For one, most of the larger trend moves of the past two months have been reversals off price spikes outside regular hours. And for two, middling ABCD patterns in stocks and futures are finishing at their 'D' targets with predictable regularity. That sums up last week's kabuki in the E-Mini S&Ps, when they head-butted the 3777.00 'D' target of a large 'reverse pattern" repeatedly, only to die a hair short of it at the bell. Docile Sellers Sellers have been particularly docile for more than a month, allowing DaBoyz to twiddle their thumbs until optimal short-squeeze conditions surfaced. Sometimes news was the catalyst, although there seems to be no such thing as bullish or bearish news -- only news to spike the market whichever way seems most opportune at the time. Friday is DaBoyz' favorite day, when half-hearted selling is easily reversed with rallies that gain momentum as the day wears on. That's because no one wants to go home short over the weekend on a day when bears have looked anemic. And so it goes for a bear market that seems destined to become the granddaddy of them all: weeks-long stretches of price action so tedious and haphazard that predicting a Sunday evening opening, or the reaction to Fed 'news' or to earnings announcements, has become a coin toss even for diligent chartists. All bear markets have a touch of Frankenstein in them, but this one's nasty sense of humor promises to be something to endure.