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The chart provides precise targets at 103.06 and 95.85 , respectively p2 and D, in lieu of one previously given here at 101.16 that was based on a possible test of lows recorded back in 2013. The higher number looks very likely to be achieved, given the way the C-D leg gapped down through p=108.27 the first time it encountered it and then turned it into upside resistance. It also makes a worst-case plunge to D, if not inevitable, then certainly thinkable. _______ UPDATE (Sep 28, 10:26): That was quite a rally. It came from pennies beneath the 101.16 low mentioned above, and it will very probably need to be tested.  However, bulls would gain the upper hand for a rare change if they can push above 108.21 this week or early next. That's where a shelf of highs was made last week.

Yields on 10-Year Treasury Notes, currently at 3.70%, are likely to hit 4.90% before they level off. It is hard to imagine an increase of such magnitude not disrupting the U.S. and global economies severely. America is already in a recession that looks all but certain to deepen before we hit bottom in a year or two. And yet the Fed keeps tightening, leaving little doubt with last week's 75-basis-point rate hike, the third in four months, that Powell & Co. are hell-bent on crushing consumer inflation that has been rampaging for two years. The Open Market Committee must have known that our teetering economy, a super-heated real estate sector and a vaporous stock market would implode if they merely talked about raising rates. However, for the first time since Volcker's 1980s heyday, the central bank has actually walked the walk, surprising everyone by pushing up administered rates a total of 275 basis points since last May. This has sent borrowing costs soaring, including mortgage rates that have more than doubled from the sub-3% levels that obtained toward the end of 2021. Under the circumstances, it is surreal for politicians to be splitting hairs over whether the U.S. is in a recession. Only in comparison to the disaster that is coming could the current economy be described, as Biden is wont to do, as holding its own. The stock market has come down hard, so far without the kind of climactic selling we might expect at a bottom. This has taken a little of the steam out of inflation, albeit mainly via falling gasoline prices that reflect a global economy in a state of imminent collapse. But the broadly falling asset prices that lie just ahead eventually will trigger waves of bankruptcies so destructive and relentless that we'll wish we

I've been reluctant to give permabears the all-clear because, being one myself, I've seen the bull market roar back from death a dozen times since 2009, turning my smug eulogies into embarrassments. The most punitive and outrageous of the rallies was the monster that emerged in March 2020, when investors cast off pandemic fears just as global business went into lockdown. What a fooler that was! Who could have guessed that prices for nearly everything were about to soar? A friend who lives in a South Jersey resort sold his home for $1.8 million, thinking he'd be able to buy it back for half that in a year or two. Instead, six months into the Covid lockdown, the house was worth $2.4 million and beyond his reach for a buyback. He's living in an apartment now, but he may ultimately get his wish if real estate prices collapse in the current, deepening recession. Another friend bought his dream vacation home in Naples FL for $4 million, but readily parted with it when a giddy fool came along just 13 months later and offered him $7 million for it. It's not as though the economy has been booming. In fact the opposite is true, notwithstanding Wall Street's idiotic focus on employment numbers that tell us nothing. Who could possibly care about this statistical poppycock when stores, restaurants, movie theaters and countless thousands of other retail businesses have been calling it quits or are within weeks or months of failing on their own? Did Biden's statisticians and pundits even notice last week when the most successful category-killer of them all, Amazon, said it was scaling back growth plans significantly? When mighty Amazon starts tightening its belt, you had better believe that, after two dispiriting quarters, this recession is just getting rolling. Levitation

The Dollar Index is headed toward an interim top at 113.16, a Hidden Pivot resistance that would culminate a bull trend begun from around 79 in 2014. However, there is an even longer-term target at 119.37 that is shown in the inset. Both uptrends could experience significant corrections along the way, but the retracement that has played out over the last week or so from a peak at 110.79 would generate a 'mechanical' buy signal at 106.64 (stop 104.64: weekly chart, A=101.30 on 6/3).  I've provided a big-picture perspective this week to explain why any weakness in the dollar, even if severe, would not jeopardize the very bullish projections possible using charts that go back as far as 20 years. This would be true even if the dollar were to fall to the green line (96.03) shown in the chart. Presumably, this would require an unprecedented money-printing spree, or a geopolitical shock severe enough to knock the dollar off its pins.

Use the 105.53 target of the pattern show as a minimum downside objective for now.  It seems likely to produce a tradeable bounce, if no more, since the pattern has already worked twice for initiating profitable 'mechanical' shorts. My hunch is that any bounce from this 'hidden support' will be short-lived and that TLT will subsequently relapse to new lows. I will continue to monitor price action in this symbol closely, since gold will remain under pressure as long as TLT, which correlates inversely with Treasury yields, is falling. ______ UPDATE (Sep 20, 12:55 p.m.): TLT has taken a so-far 94-cent bounce after plummeting to within an inch of the 105.53 target billboarded above. Subscribers have reported covering shorts there profitably, but it's too early to tell whether the reversal will get legs. _______ UPDATE (Sep 21, 7:51 p.m.): The bounce showed some 'leg' today, that's for sure. Let's see how bulls handle three (!) 'external' peaks immediately above. They lie, respectively, at 108.21, 109.52 and 110.56. An uncorrected blast exceeding all of them would imply that a powerful recovery is under way. _______ UPDATE (Sep 22, 10:16): Treasurys have gotten smacked down brutally today, implying this vehicle will grope its way down to the 2013 low at 101.17 in search of support. Here's the chart.

The portfolio managers who diddle the markets with our hard-earned money have limited bandwidth for the mindless 'themes' that determine which groups of stocks will be in or out of fashion at a given time. At the moment, simplicity rules with this theme: dollar up, sell everything else; dollar down, buy everything else. That's the way things have been working lately -- and are likely to keep working for the foreseeable future, since the dollar's strength lies well beyond the control of the little Napoleons who run the central bank. At present, DXY is in a so-far minor correction following a run-up that culminated last week with a 20-year high at 110.79. However, if the bounce from Friday's 108.36 low impales p=109.05 in the early going on Monday and then goes on to exceed D=109.73 of the modest pattern shown, that would signal the likely resumption of the bull trend and an imminent move to new, multi-decade highs. This will be an inflation-killer, but don't expect to read about it in the mainstream media until after the global economy has been sucked into a black hole of bankruptcies and barter. ______ UPDATE (Sep 12, 9:55 p.m.): Here's a serviceable new pattern to gauge trend strength and trade this symbol, since last night's dive wiped out the point 'c' low of the original pattern. A decisive push past p=108.50 is needed to put the dollar back in bullish gear.  ______ UPDATE (Sep 13, 6:50 p.m.): The stock market's cascade today opposite a very strong dollar underscores the point I made above. Look for new highs on Wednesday after the rally impales D=110.88 of A=107.69 (6/26).

Last week's plunge to ten-year lows was so dispiriting that perhaps it's time to prepare for an important turn. My gut feeling is that Friday's 107.42 bottom lies within a single point or so of a major low that would surely be tradeable. If so, I'd suggest using a 'camo' set-up on the lesser charts to leverage a possible reversal. This one is likely to require expert play, but I'll provide timely guidance in the chat room if interest is strong. ______ UPDATE (Sep 13, 8:57 p.m.): The so-far feeble bounce suggests TLT will continue down to at least p2=102.06 of this pattern before it can turn around.  Otherwise, you can use a print at 108.90 as a bullish telltale. 

Friday's gap-up rally exceeded by a few cents a minor 'D' target at 31.05 that I'd flagged here earlier. This is mildly encouraging, but check out the weekly chart (inset) for perspective.  Even if the uptrend were to continue a further $4, exceeding mid-June's 'external' peak at 35.26, the move would still be $7 shy of creating a bullish impulse leg on the weekly chart. That is what we should require if we're to infer that the bear market begun from $66 two years ago is over.  From a trading perspective, however, our short-term bias should wax aggressively bullish if and when buyers push this sack of lug nuts above the 'external peak at 31.35 recorded on August 29. _______ UPDATE (Sep 16, 12:57 a.m.): This pattern, with a worst-case target at 23.60, seems to be working, although an opportune 'mechanical' short on the run-up to the green line failed by a hair to trigger. ______ UPDATE (Sep 28, 10:40 p.m.): The most powerful one-day rally since May was impulsive on the lesser charts but not very, since it exceeded only a single, minor 'external' peak on the 30-minute graph. After an engineered short squeeze on the opening bar, GDXJ spent the rest of the day slogging into a gap from last Friday, but it would need to surpass the 30.28 peak recorded two days earlier to start looking impressive.

Leave it to the pundits to tell us what the hell the stock market was celebrating on Friday. The FAANG stocks inspired an inexplicable rampage, just like in the good-old days, and everything seemed right with the world. In the view of those anointed by television producers to make sense of Wall Street's non-stop nuttiness, it is always the central bank's seeming intentions that have caused shares to move, whatever the direction. This is occasionally true, but the tortured reasoning it requires to flesh out the point hardly satisfies skeptics who see a world in meltdown. Shouldn't shares be falling steeply in order to discount the growing unlikelihood, if not to say impossibility, that the U.S. economy will ever return to normalcy, whatever that might be, let alone to good health? There are so many gangrenous appendages in the all-important consumer sector, for one, that it is reasonable to speculate that Amazon will be the only retailer left after this so-far wishy-washy recession turns lethal. The Simple Explanation For the record, there is a simple explanation for the sharp rally that ended the week, and it is this: Every trader on the planet came to his desk Friday morning eager to short every uptick. And so they did, creating perfect conditions for a short-squeeze that put stocks relentlessly on the rise until 15 minutes before the final bell. What happened then underscored the quasi-criminal nature of the game: stocks dove, but only far enough to sodomize holders of call options who were doubtless counting their chickens. Some would have been holding Chipotle 1725 calls that had fluctuated intraday from $5 to $15 and were worth $8 at 3:46 p.m.. Sitting pretty, right? In fact, the calls went to zero in the final 14 minutes when CMG mysteriously plunged to 1723.