The Morning Line

The broad averages have been lapping at some long-term rally targets this week, although not so voraciously that bears should dive for cover quite yet. A 304.07 target for DIA has been exceeded so far by 1.63 points; a 312.29 target in QQQ by 2.35 points; and 12,829 target in the E-Mini Nasdaq by 89 points, or  0.6%. These Hidden Pivot resistance points have already served us well, keeping us comfortably on the right side of powerful uptrends that flouted the pandemic's fatal effect on a wide swath of the U.S. economy. Small businesses are failing by the thousands each day, creating structural unemployment problems that will be with us even if there are ten more stimulus packages yet to come. Wall Street seems not to care, as long as a handful of mega-cap companies that earn their money mainly from advertising continue to grow in value. They have been inflating 'wealth' by tens of billions of dollars each day, dulling whatever lessons investors may have learned from the last bear market. Please note that the Dow Industrials are poised to rally a further 2300 points, to at least 32,692, if the new year begins with a bang. It's hard to imagine what could stop it.

With the post-Christmas resumption of trading Sunday morning, bitcoin tacked on an insane $3,000 in the blink of an eye. Even more preposterous is that a correction one might have expected to last for at least three to five days appears to have run its course in mere hours. This has raised the prospect of cryptomoney fever achieving yet another record high before dawn. How much farther could the rampage go?  A projection using the Hidden Pivot Method suggests that the next big thrust will hit 33,600, about 6000 points, or 22%, above these levels. But why should it stop there, we might ask, with mass hysteria's Olympus beckoning at 100,000? We'll be better able to assess whether bulls have the gumption to get there once we've seen how they handle the 'hidden' resistance at 33,600. If this proprietary pivot is dramatically impaled on first contact, be prepared for a burst to 50,000, a marquee-quality number that would be in play simply because I will have run out of Hidden Pivot targets. Support from Billionaires Disclaimer:  I think bitcoin is, if not a hoax, then a cleverly marketed scheme on the order of alchemy and cold fusion. I get emails all the time from bitcoiners convinced cryptocurrency should be prized over all other investable assets, particularly gold. The most fervent believers are robinhoodies and millennials with little experience of precious metals, other than as jewelry that old people wear. At gold's expense, they have helped push bitcoin into its second speculative mania, the first having ended woefully in 2018. The collapse that year took it from an all-time high of 19707 down to 3134. The current short-squeeze supernova has much more power behind it, however -- not only from speculative excesses fueled by buyers too young to know about or