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Call it a recession or anything else you prefer, but the bottom line is that the prosperity of decades past is not coming back. Thinking expansively about the economy is no longer part of the American mindset, since, as should be perfectly clear to everyone by now, the Fed's epic, easy-credit hoax can do little but inflate asset values to the point of collapse. We are nearly there now, even accepting that the U.S stock market, afflicted by mass psychosis, will remain capable for a while of staging one last, fatally deceptive hurrah to make certain everyone is aboard for the crash that ends two generations of economic madness. We can no longer delude ourselves into thinking the statistics pushed at us by Biden, but also by his predecessors, portend better times. Least meaningful of all, but still greeted with spin, hubris and a raucous burlesque of feigned nervousness on Wall Steet, are employment figures that would suggest the economy is producing plenty of jobs. But what kind of jobs, and for whom? Leave it to my friend and colleague Charles Hugh Smith, one of the most insightful thinkers in the blogosphere, to tell it like it is: The picture is quite despairing, he avers. Not necessarily for you and me as individuals, though, since each of us in theory has the wherewithal to plan for dealing with the worst of times. For him personally, that means not merely hunkering down with a perhaps overly optimistic Plan B, but with a rigorously plotted  Plan C to make him as self-sufficient as possible when an energy-dependent food network has made it extremely difficult for people living in heavily urbanized areas to feed themselves and keep warm. Accordingly, he has also scaled back energy use in and around his home in Hawaii,

More pain is coming, since the July 15 low at 18.17 generated the first impulse leg we've seen on the weekly chart since this interminable correction began exactly a year ago. The low breached the distant, look-to-the-left external from last June by only a hair, but that's enough to allow the presumption that the C-D follow-through leg will have its way. It should reach p=18.53 at least, a midpoint Hidden Pivot that can be bottom-fished with the usual precautions. But if the support gets splattered, look for more downside to p2=17.37, or even D=16.22  in the Sep-Oct period.

What a shocker. The no-decision monkeys who have lived off AAPL's autopilot bull market have succeeded in levitating the stock to within a split hair of the 172.78 target I spotlighted here weeks ago. It was trading in the 140s then, and it seemed difficult to believe at the time that the stock could rise that much on punk earnings, a U.S. economy sinking into recession, and Apple Inc. unable to innovate its way out of a Glad bag. But just look at it! Another 6% and it'll be in record territory. I've documented the short-squeeze tactics that were used to goose the world's biggest-cap stock skyward with hardly any bullish buying or even cash outlays. It was a simple trick: Let the stock drop overnight until sellers are exhausted, then run it up shorts' wazoos on the opening bell. The rally has been a fraud every inch of the way, but there's no denying it worked. And now what? Can AAPL wait for the broad averages to catch up? Probably not, since the Nasdaq and even the FAANGs are trading closer to their bombed out lows than to their insane, all-time highs. It should be interesting to watch the DaBoyz try to vamp for a month or two while the U.S. economy continues to sink into the crapper. Stay tuned to this page and the chat room for the technical play-by-play. _____ UPDATE (Aug 15, 7:43 p.m. EDT): A feebler than usual short squeeze topped at 173.40, 0.3% above my target, so I recommended buying the expiring 165/160 put spread 16 times for 0.12. This is a 30-to-1 horse, so don't get your hopes too high. Offer eight of them to close for 0.25, good through Wednesday and contingent on the stock trading 170.00 or higher. _______ UPDATE (Aug 17,

Crude would trigger a 'mechanical' short if it touches the green line x=96.15. However, because the impulse leg was such an agonizing slog, I can recommend this trade only to subscribers who know how to cut the implied theoretical entry risk of $23,000 on four contracts to perhaps a tenth of that. It would require close attention to 'camouflage' opportunities on the sub-15-minute charts, aka 'camouflage. Merely spectating will have its rewards, since the next leg down should help snuff inflation at the pump as well as the unchecked greed of Big Oil. _______ UPDATE (Aug 15, 7:54 p.m.):  Use the 81.79 target shown here as a minimum downside projection for the near term. If this Hidden Pivot support fails, the next step down would be to 78.93, calculated using A=111.14 from June 29.  _______ UPDATE (Aug 18, 9:27): The failure of bears to reach p2=84.66 of the pattern shown in the thumbnail inset suggests it is on its way up to at least to the green line (x=96.11). It would trigger a 'mechanical;' short there, stop 101.85, but I am not recommending the trade because of the weakly erratic nature of the A-B impulse leg.

Gold has been huffing and puffing for two weeks without making much headway. That's not saying it can't still pop through p=1840.80 with brio, but we'll need to see it happen before we get excited. Thereupon, p2=1913.10 would become out minimum upside objective, with a shot at 1985.40 for the bull cycle begun three weeks ago from 1696. As always, a decisive penetration of any of the three Hidden Pivot levels implies a continuation of the trend to the next. The pattern looks likely to produce winning 'mechanical' buys if gold hits an air pocket as it seems wont to do whenever bulls get too interested. _______ UPDATE (Aug 17, 11:06 p.m.): Maybe the D=1772.2 downside target shown in this chart will provide a respite for buils, however brief and unsatisfying? ______ UPDATE (Aug 18, 9:32 p.m.): It provide no respite whatsoever when the 'hidden' support gave way like wet tissue. But none of us could have been surprised, since gold, in its tedious bottoming process, seems to delight in disappointing bulls about 90% of the time. This may be an even more dismal spell than usual, given the dollar's bullish breakout (see my DXY update elsewhere  on this page.  

December Silver appears on track for  push to the 21.93 'D' target of the pattern shown. The odds were somewhat enhanced when last week's dip from just above the red line (p=20.78) failed to provide a 'mechanical' buying opportunity by reaching the green line as required. Don't pass up a buying opportunity if it should swoon to x this week, but check the chat room for risk avoidance guidance before you leap. The rally target lies within a thicket of supply deposited on the daily chart last spring, and so a decisive push through D would be more impressive than usual. ______ UPDATE (Aug 17, 11:19 p.m.): My mild enthusiasm for Silver appears to have been  unwarranted, perhaps because I overqualified the impulse leg that seemed to be driving the rally. The last piece of it exceeded no 'external' peaks, even though the launch stage got past some small ones near the bottom of the move. Anyway, the December contract appear likely to abort the 21.95 rally target, and I'm not about to sugarcoat what could happen after that.  The disappointing picture is shown in this chart.

Last week's steep fall to the green line from just shy of D will provide an interesting test of 'mechanical' set-ups, since they are designed to signal buying opportunities when one's instincts shout 'Flee for your life!' Bulls must have been feeling like that on Thursday, when the downdraft reached a perhaps temporary bottom. It should be good enough to propel TLT to at least p=116.90, but I hadn't recommended buying at x unless you are familiar with 'camouflage' set-ups that can pare entry risk by as much as 95%. Please let me know in the chat room if you took the trade and I'll establish a tracking position if there are at least two of you. ______ UPDATE (Aug 15, 11:05 a.m. ET): The gap-up opening hit 116.75, so you should be out of half the position. I'll use the current price of 116.17, well off the high, to establish a cost basis of 112.91 for the 200 shares that remain. Tie them to an impulsive stop-loss at 114.83 for now, o-c-o with an offer of 100 shares at 118.50 and another 100 at 119.30. _____ UPDATE (Aug 16, 5:27 p.m.): For those who actually did the trade, the stop would have taken you out today for a $384 gain. We got lucky, since this vehicle has been trading like garbage.

Groping for a bottom, the Dollar Index has already triggered one false 'buy' signal this month. A new signal would be generated by a 106.06 print, but we'll need to monitor the lesser charts if and when it gets there to determine whether the rally is for real. If so, that would imply minimum upside thereafter to at least 107.46, the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance of the pattern shown. If the trend pushes easily past it, we could be looking at new highs by mid- to late September. _______ UPDATE (Aug 15, 8:00 p.m.): The decisive pop through 106.06 implies the rally is bound for a minimum p2=107.46.  _______ UPDATE (Aug 18, 9:41 p.m.): And now today's pop through p=107.46 strongly implies that p2=108.87 will be reached. That will of course set up a test of July 14's importnnt peak at 109.29. Keep D=110.27 in mind if and when p2 gives way.

Is the stock market on its way to new record highs? The thought would have seemed preposterous just a week ago, when the Dow’s still-presumptive bear rally had yet to exceed even a single peak on the daily chart. But it did so last Wednesday, with a gap-up opening that demonstrated how spectacular daily gains can be engineered by Wall Street’s wizards to require little bullish enthusiasm or even much cash. As detailed here last week, this has been especially true of AAPL, the Titanic of the securities world and a crucial bellwether for investor sentiment. One might have thought it would take hundreds of billions of dollars to float the stock back to the surface following its nearly 30% plunge from a record $183 in January to a Mindanao low of $129 in mid-June. So many investors lost so much money as AAPL plummeted that their eagerness to recoup at least some of it should have turned the stock leaden the entire way up. Suckers Never Learn Instead, DaBoyz last week succeeded with little effort in driving AAPL to within a hair of a $172 target I’d disseminated to subscribers more than a month ago. Along the way, no fewer than a dozen times, they employed a trick that has never failed to work, even though the same suckers have been played countless times. The pros simply pulled their bids overnight, letting Apple shares fall sharply enough to dry up sellers. When bears realized at the opening bell that there was little or no supply to cover their shorts, panic buying into ghost offers did the rest. Thus did the resulting price spikes in the early moments of numerous sessions accomplish what merely bullish buying never could – i.e., goosing the stock past imposing peaks and thick layers of