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AAPL's steep run-up last week slightly exceeded the 160.48 target we'd been using since the stock was trading around 146. The 54-cent overshoot amounted to just three-tenths of a percentage point, but that's sufficient in this case to put p2=163.87 in play as a minimum upside target. Just to be sure, we'll stipulate that the stock close for a second consecutive day above 160.48. An easy penetration of p2 would imply still more upside to D=172.40. Mechanical levels will be in play for trade set-ups if the stock moves higher, although odds of a pullback sufficient to trigger a trade are not favorable. That implies we may need to zoom down to the 5-  or 15-minute chart to get it done. _______ UPDATE (Nov 22, 10:25 a.m.): With this morning's powerful, wholly fabricated short-squeeze, AAPL has effortlessly and with no actual work added yet more hundreds of billions of dollars to the global store of inflation-based 'wealth'.  The stock is headed to 172.40 now, a Hidden Pivot with the potential to challenge a bull market that has become a runaway hoax. _______ UPDATE (Nov 22, 10:07 p.m.): A subscribers asked in the chat room whether today's vicious, 100% rigged reversal has negated the 172.40 target. My response:  Only a dip beneath C=138.27 would invalidate the target. Judging from the way the uptrend spiked through both p and p2, I am not even slightly spooked by today's bull trap. The stock will have to build a new base, but I am surely not writing off the 172.40 target. This matters, because, as AAPL goes, so goes the stock market and planet earth, economically speaking.

Did you notice last week's tone change? The whole, eternally benighted world of pundits, economists, Bloomberg news producers, forecasters et al. has been disbelieving the bond rally as the Fed's ultimately unredeemable portfolio of Treasury debt has grown from merely massive to intergalactic in size. Now the talking heads are having to change their tune in order to catch up with charts that have been no worse than neutral on T-Bonds for months. So what "story" are they telling themselves to explain what they were unwilling to see back in January? Simply that we are witnessing a global "flight to safety" as Covid threatens to tank the economies of Europe and China yet again. Of course, nothing says "safety" like the whole world piling onto the shoddy, brittle edifice of U.S. debt. Trust your instincts: This trend cannot end well. In the meantime, the technical outlook calls for at least somewhat higher T-Bond prices and correspondingly lower yields. On the long bond, that would imply a descent to 1.70% from a current 1.91%. If that level is breached we could see 1.54%. At some point, the lower rates accompanying a bear market in stocks will be seen as reflecting not a flight to safety, but as a manifestation of the catastrophic deflation that has been bearing down on the financial planet, steadily gathering size and strength since the S&L crisis of the early 1990s. Dollar Short Squeeze = Deflation While economists have kept busy trying not to acknowledge that T-Bonds are moving in the wrong direction, a rising dollar has equally confounded them, as well as investors who bet on inflation. Although lower yields are ostensibly benign, albeit faintly symptomatic of the coming deflationary bust, a strong dollar is capable of wrecking the global financial system overnight. I've written here

The chart is bullish, but not very. A strong rally from the 157^03 low recorded on October 22 looks spent without having taken out any old highs. This suggests the pullback begun last week will need to correct for perhaps another 4-7 days before the futures can attempt a new launch. If the selloff comes down to the green line (x=159^30), it would trigger a mildly appealing 'mechanical' buy, stop 157^03.  The implied entry risk on four contracts would exceed $10,000, so check the Trading Room for guidance before you attempt this. _______ UPDATE (Nov 15, 6:52 p.m. ET): In a chat room post this morning, I ratcheted up my enthusiasm for the trade suggested above. I'd wait till the futures touch the green line (159^30) before fashioning a 'camo' entry trigger, but here's an example with just $100 of theoretical entry risk per contract that triggered and is profitable at the moment. The purpose of these camo trades is not to make a pile of money, but to take advantage of bigger-picture opportunities with initial risk reduced to a practical minimum. ______UPDATE (Nov 16, 5:20 p.m.): The futures have tripped two profitable 'camo' trades off a big-picture 'mechanical' X at 159^30 that would be stopped at 157^02. Neither went the distance, but the goal is to hold 25% of the original 'camo' position for a swing at the fences. I will vet similar trades if there's interest in the chat room. Our expectation is to make at least a little money even if the bigger trade doesn't work out.

The bounce on Thursday interrupted a punitive downtrend, triggering a 'mechanical' short at x=64,166 in the process. Bertie has only given one false 'mechanical' signal since I began tracking it several years ago, but it was a buy signal. I've mostly tuned out minor 'sells,' since it has been obvious all along that bitcoin was headed much higher. That is still the case, and I am sticking with the 89,780 bull-market target given here previously. But I am going to give the bearish chart shown the benefit of the doubt for now. If the 'mechanical' signal is correct Bertie should fall to at least p=62,729, but possibly to p2=61,291. I doubt the damage would be much worse than that, but if a plunge demolishes p, we'd have to take the possibility of d=59,853 being reached more seriously. _______ UPDATE (Nov 15, 7:10 p.m. ET):  I've raised 'C' of the still-bearish pattern to the intraday high at 66,344. It suggests that a cautious bid at 63,111 could be used for bottom-fishing, but don't risk more than relative pocket change. A decisive breach of this secondary Hidden Pivot would portend more slippage to at least p2=61,494. _______ UPDATE (Nov 16, 5:41 p.m.): For a very rare change Bertie actually exceeded a 'd' correction target. This development warrants our attention, but it is hardly the death knell for this lunatic-powered vehicle.  If all remains (relatively) well, it should be easy to make money on the long side with 'mechanical' set-ups over the next couple of weeks. _______ UPDATE (Nov 18, 8:58 p.m.): The correction would need to hit 55,652 to equal the one in September. This reversal pattern implies Bertie can be bottom-fished with a tight 'camo' set-up.

AAPL has looked pretty punk for the last couple of weeks, but I am proffering a bullish chart nonetheless because bears couldn't drive the stock down to a correction  target at 145.95 last week. (It remains theoretically valid.)  The stock in fact reversed almost precisely from the p2 secondary pivot of the pattern, which often foretells strong moves in the opposite direction. We should hold the oohs and ahhs, however, until such time as buyers show their stuff at p=153.40 (corrected). This midpoint pivot can be used as a minimum upside projection for now, subject to revision if the stock should dive below C=146.41. _______ UPDATE (Nov 17, 4:19 p.m. EST): This morning's adroitly engineered short-squeeze did what mere bullish buying could never have accomplished, pushing AAPL decisively above p=153.40 and an important prior peak. Factor in the subsequent close above the pivot, and it all but guarantees that D=160.38 will be reached. ______ UPDATE (Nov 18, 9:07 p.m.):  The guarantee of a move to 160.38 (see above) was all but fulfilled today when the crime syndicate that works AAPL goosed it to 158.67, courtesy of yet more short-covering.

John Doerr, the venture capital zillionaire, thinks America should go all-in on measures to control the weather. Although Doerr fears it may be too late to save Earth and its inhabitants from the ravages of global warming, he says a massive investment program would still be better than doing nothing. His role model is FDR, who put America on war footing with astounding speed after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The tycoon and those he hobnobs with have so much money that they could be forgiven for being unaware that America is broke. Sure, there's plenty of 'wealth' tied up in stocks, bonds and real estate. But valuations are so pumped with hot air that we might as well write off three-quarters of it, since it will vanish anyway in the next bear market. Plunging share prices will bring many painful epiphanies, including the realization that every dime of the nearly $30 trillion owed by the U.S. Government-- which is to say, owed by taxpayers -- will have to be repaid: if not by borrowers, then by lenders. That is the inexorable logic of deflation, and when it comes we will be too busy dealing with the implosion of Social Security, Medicare and Baby Boomer retirement plans to be gung-ho about taming the weather, were this even possible. Democrats to the Rescue! By then, Americans won't feel much like spending tens of trillions of dollars for coal-plant scrubbers, thorium reactors, Wyoming-sized solar arrays and recapturing methane at wellheads. Galloping to the rescue, Democrats will propose a new tax on gasoline to jump-start 'Build Back Weather'. But the sums required just to get to the first stage of this guaranteed boondoggle would dwarf whatever could be raised with a surcharge of even $10 a gallon, not that anyone would still be

Who could have predicted that a microchip shortage would threaten to seriously impair the global auto industry? And yet, here we are: assembly plants are unable to ship enough cars to meet demand, and buyers are facing six-month delays and steeply rising prices. This has pushed used-car prices beyond the reach of those who can't afford showroom new. We sense that the problem could be worse than the industry is letting on because "experts" are saying bottlenecks could persist until the end of 2023. Whom do they think they are kidding? The global economy is so screwed up right now that even a team of MIT eggheads using a supercomputer and petabytes of economic data couldn't predict where interest rates will be in 30 days, let alone in two years. To say the chip shortage might drag on for a couple more years is to all but concede that it's likely to persist indefinitely (sort of like the Fed telling us they might consider tightening "next year"). Rosary Bead Shortage The shortages that have cropped up so far have taught us that predicting what will be in short supply next takes imagination. Bicycles, surfboards, certain prescription drugs, ships and shipping containers, workers in many sectors, including construction, trucking, retail, restaurant, hotel and manufacturing -- all are in critically short supply at the moment. They are also economically tied, often in obscure ways, meaning that a shortage of pasta could eventually affect the supply and demand for accordions, Chianti and Rosary beads. It has also put consumers on high alert, ready to hoard household items a nanosecond after the mere rumor of a shortage hits the blogosphere.  It is predictable that there will be food scares this winter and that they will get the kind of attention that will make us

Bitcoin continued to idle as it turned midpoint resistance at 59,302 into a launching platform for a shot at 89,780. We are unlikely to see the severe pullback required to set up a 'mechanical' buy of daily-chart degree, so any attempt to get aboard would be a labor-intensive project on the lesser charts. Please nudge me in the trading room if you have an entry set-up you'd like vetted. In the meantime, you can use p2=74,541 as a minimum upside projection for the near term. _____ UPDATE (Nov 10, 1:16 a.m.): The glue sniffers are back, allowing bitcoin's shark-tank sponsors to waft an effectively bidless Bertie as high as 68,510. It's not as though the 89,780 target was ever in doubt. _______ UPDATE (Nov 11, 11:22 p.m.): Today's hellish plunge did only slight damage to the bullish big picture, although it did create a robust impulse leg on the hourly chart. Here's a pattern obscure enough to work nicely. Use it with confidence for 'mechanical' shorting or bottom-fishing at p2 and/or D.

AAPL partly recouped heavy overnight losses so effortlessly on Friday that one can barely discern a swoon on the daily chart. Every selloff for the last nearly 13 years has turned out to have been a buying opportunity, so why should this one be any different? Punk earnings, or even the lowering of expectations, haven't had much impact on the stock, other than to shake out widows and pensioners. Look for AAPL to spend the early part of the week digesting Thursday's uninspiring report before making a run for the all-time high at 157.26 recorded on September 7.