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Our favorite stock-market bellwether had a decent week, with a 6% rally sufficiently lacking in excitement to suggest the stock's handlers are quietly planning more of the same. The rally came on the heels of a successful 'mechanical' short from x=143.27 that I had recommended paper trading. The winning pullback did not so much suggest weakness as restfulness, and that's why we should expect the current uptrend to take out C=151.74, even if there's not much follow-through.  Indeed, it would be a shocker -- at least for me -- if this bear squeeze makes it to 166.48 peak that I've used as the point 'A' high shown in the chart. _______ UPDATE (Jul 13, 10:01 p.m.): Portfolio managers who have lived effortlessly off AAPL over the years are prepared to move heaven and earth to stop out shorts above C=151.74. They will have their work cut out for them, since iPhone sales have never faced a global downturn remotely as menacing as the one that has already begun.

A 29.92 downside target I'd drum-rolled, albeit with a dollop of sarcasm, turned out to have been just the ticket for subscribers who have been waiting patiently for a turn. Enough of you reported getting long using my number that I've established a 400-share (or multiple thereof) tracking position. Assuming 50% of the position was exited near 31.35 as advised, you are holding half of the original position with a profit-adjusted cost basis of 28.49. For now, stick to the 30.52 stop-loss  advised earlier. That's where selling would generate a bearish impulse leg on the lesser charts. Make the order o-c-o with another to exit an additional 25% of the position at 32.43. ______ UPDATE (Jul 12, 5:25 p.m.):  If you followed my guidance, you should have dismounted this glue horse at 30.52 for a theoretical gain of $206. We'll go back to ignoring GDXJ until such time as it shows better behavior.  Worst case is now D=25.35. yet one more place where we could back up the truck and hope to make money even if we're wrong about a bottom there.

August Gold finally turned higher on the final bar of the week, a suspicious development from which some in the chat room seemed inclined nonetheless to take encouragement. My take is more skeptical, given the way sellers cracked the midpoint Hidden Pivot support at 1794.90 a week earlier. It suggested that the futures are likely to reach 'D' before they can make a good-faith attempt to end the long dirge begun from $2000  in April. Please note the small adjustment in the chart -- a shift to a higher point 'A' that has lowered the target by a few dollars to 1707.20.  Note as well that a two-level rally to x=1888.70 would set up a 'mechanical' short of a kind that has worked well for us in the past. _____ UPDATE (Jul 12, 5:38 p.m.): Chat room remonstrations have sought equal time for predictions of a 1670 low before this cinder block can turn around, so here it is: a 1665.00 Hidden Pivot target. Certainly not impossible, but I will be looking for a tradeable and potentially important turn from higher levels nonetheless. Specifically, I expect the futures to bounce from 1718.30, and thence from 1707.20 if there's a relapse. If 1707.20 is exceeded on a closing basis for two consecutive days, however, or exceeded by more than $4 intraday, I would infer that 1670 is indeed going to be reached (and slightly exceeded).  That would be a great place to back up the truck and buy 'em hand-over-fist.

Much as I've been hating Bertie lately, I'd have been eager to bottom-fish down near D=17,903 if this bitcoin proxy had come closer to it.  The Hidden Pivot target should have been achieved, given the way sellers stabbed p=25,223 on the way down a month ago. Instead, we saw an upturn from $700 above it. Ordinarily I would infer this is more bullish than a reversal from the target itself. In this case, however, I have assumed buyers jumped the gun only because of the obviousness of the pattern and its target. That doesn't mean a real rally could not begin with brazen front-running as has occurred here, but it does suggest that the overweening eagerness of the players could become a negative as profit-taking enroute to the round number $25,000 grows intense.

How high is the bear rally begun in mid-June likely to go before buyers run out of gas? The 4029.75 target shown in the chart is a logical answer, even if the hubris of billboarding it here could queer its voodoo magic. A run-up to 4029 would represent a 3.1% gain over Friday's close and a 10.7% move off the June 17 low. Since January, when the bear first showed its fangs after hibernating since 2009, rallies have been relatively subdued, implying shorts have yet to be spooked into covering. Perhaps it's because the outlook for the U.S. and global economies is so dark that there are few good reasons to be discovered for buying shares. Not that buyers have ever needed reasons, let alone good ones. But even bad ones lack persuasiveness these days, what with the 'experts' debating how much recession we're likely to get. Triggering off short-covering stampedes will always be a primary concern of the stock market's institutional sponsors. That's because short-covering is the only source of buying powerful enough to push the broad average past previous peaks. It also has the miraculous ability to make investors temporarily forget about the wall of worry no matter how mountainous. The effect can produce spasms of mass insanity so overwhelming that even now, with the U.S. economy about to tank, a stock market rally to new all-time highs is not inconceivable. Post-Blowoff Behavior It  is extremely unlikely, however, given that residential real estate has completed a blowoff top; the auto sector is being suffocated by high prices and material shortages; and consumer credit growth has turned down as interest rates rise across the yield curve. Under the circumstances, even if a punitive bear squeeze is overdue, investors shouldn't get their hopes too high that it'll come before stocks

Sellers ran out of steam precisely at the 104.42 target shown in the chart. This implies the so-far one-day bounce could travel a bit farther or even get legs, since the pattern took fully two weeks to play out. I'd proffered a 105.52 downside target initially, but when it was somewhat exceeded, a new target was warranted. The one in the chart was calculated simply by sliding 'A' up a notch above the original one-off. Now, if the uptrend exceeds c=114.05 of the reverse pattern, we should infer 116.29 as a target.  Here is the chart from which it is derived. Please note that one coordinate was slightly off and that the corrected target, as implied above, is 116.29, with p=110.43. (I have not corrected the actual chart.) _______ UPDATE (Jul 5, 9:21 a.m.): Last night's vicious little head-fake above p=110.82 reminds me of NatGas, which is always out to cripple and maim those who are capable of getting the trend and the swings right consistently. In retrospect, and in this particular instance, this behavior justifies using an ABCD pattern anchored at 101.53, a 'marquee' low. It yields a D target at 117.08 that is about to become moot with a presumptive feint below C=104.56.  Incidentally, I am not buying into the bullish story that the resurgence of China's manufacturing sector is about to drive energy prices to the moon. _______ UPDATE (Jul 6, 8:16 p.m.): We used this pattern to trade a 94.70 downside target.  Given the precise hit at p and its subsequent destruction, I cannot fathom why the target was not achieved within three pennies or less. Perhaps one last swoon is needed to finish the job? ______ UPDATE (Jul 7, 6:02 p.m.): Evidently not. The futures went ballistic today off yesterday's 95.10 low, and that's pretty bullish. 

AAPL has been so quietly boring and  disappointing that one could almost forget that it is the most important stock in the world, a true bellwether for...everything. It's on a 'mechanical' short at the moment, triggered last week by a rally to the green line (143.27). It shows no eagerness to do the right thing by falling to D=117.87, but it's going to get there sooner or later. How can it be avoided with sales of the company's overpriced cell phones facing the deepest recession since the 1930s? There is mountainous supply every inch of the way above these levels, so it'll be interesting to see how the stock's evil-genius handlers hold it aloft for distribution.  The time-honored tactic in bear markets is not a lengthy slide sideways, but rather a nasty goosing of shorts just when things are quietest. Let's watch to see how they do it. _______ UPDATE (Jul 6, 7:53 p.m.): The ratcheting short-squeeze is how, but there's real supply in the range 147-150 for DaBoyz to choke on, so they have their work cut out for them. 

The dollar looks bound straightaway for the 106.49 rally target we've been using for the last month or so. I'd expected a correction down to the green line, but it was not to be.  Although my long-term forecast calls for significantly higher prices challenging peaks near 120 recorded decades ago, we should pay close attention to price action at 106.49, since this Hidden Pivot resistance looks sufficiently clear and compelling to thwart the dollar's strong ascent. I'll continue to track DXY in any event, since an increasingly strong dollar poses a grave threat to the global economy and financial system. ______ UPDATE Jul 5, 8:20 p.m.): Today's ballistic rally slightly exceeded the 106.49 target billboarded above. Given the way it speared p and p2, more upside to at least 107.57, (shown in this chart) over the near term appears all but certain. A question for the dismal scientists and pundits to ponder: How inflationary is a runaway dollar??  

I've been so down on gold lately that I should probably recuse myself, but here we go anyway: The trampoline rally off Friday's heavily manipulated low is likely bound for at least 1828.80, the D target of the reverse pattern shown. It is not quite a done deal because of the hesitation at p. That's why bulls should be careful if and when the move hits p2=1817.30, where a tradeable reversal could occur. Meanwhile it would take a print exceeding 1882.50 to negate the 1756.90 downside target that has been in play for nearly a month. ______ UPDATE (Jul 5, 11:20 a.m. EDT): So much for giving gold the benefit of the doubt. Today's freefall looks bound for D=1746.30, a back-up-the-truck spot for bottom fishing as far as I'm concerned. Here's the chart, with a pattern that caught a beautiful mechanical short just head of what eventually will have been a $136 selloff.  _______ UPDATE (Jul 6, 8:06 p.m.): We're now working on a 1710.00 target, although the bearish forecast did not prevent our exploiting a mid-day rally worth as much as $2300 to anyone who followed my 11:43 a.m. Trading Room 'rABC' guidance. (It also went out in timely fashion to all subscribers in the form of a 'Notification'.)))))))))))))