Rick’s Picks

Bears turned toothless on Friday, but neither that nor a voodoo forecast in the chat room of a big rally could overcome the crushing weight of the pattern shown. It projects a further fall of 180 points, to 3502.50, before this minor phase of the bear market begun on January 4 has run its course. Bulls might be tempted to imagine the worst is over if the big rally actually occurs and reaches the green line (4029), but that would merely trigger an appealing 'mechanical' short predicated on a relapse to 3502. That target still looks very likely to be achieved, given the way sellers vaporized the 3853 midpoint Hidden Pivot support the first time they encountered it on the way down, on June 14.

Oil got pummeled as the week ended, but it is too early to tell whether the move will prove impulsive or merely corrective. Regardless, if the futures were to fall to the green line, that would trigger a 'mechanical' buy I would rate a fetching '7.7'. That implies the July contract would rebound to at least to p=114.33 before falling beneath C=88.53. The  longstanding target at 140.12 will remain viable until such time as C is breached. My hunch is that a reverse-pattern bid with the 'c' anchored near 107.00 would work if you are trying to bottom-fish a short-term low. ______ UPDATE (June 21, 9:42 a.m. EDT): Here's a chart for the August contract, with the green line relocated to 98.84.

I'd suggested paper-trading the 'mechanical' short at 1851.10 that triggered last Thursday, but the point of the exercise was to underscore my advice that any rally not be taken too seriously. This one came off a low at 1806.10 hit on Tuesday, and the trade became theoretically profitable the next day with a so-far moderate reversal. The price target is 1756.9o, a Hidden Pivot support that can serve as a worst-case objective for the next 7-10 days. _______ UPDATE (Jun 22, 9:20 p.m.): Gold's price action can be best understood if you see it as a Bill Cosby girlfriends, unwittingly drugged and in a deep stupor.

July Silver futures tripped a 'mechanical' short last week similar to one in gold that went profitable the next day. The trade is predicated on a further fall to 19.64, but in theory taking a partial profit would be warranted at p=21.10. The initial move down to p breached this Hidden Pivot support but not by much, implying that the C-D follow-through leg currently in progress is less than certain to achieve the 19.64 target. We'll be better able to judge the odds of this once we've seen the downtrend interact for a second time with the pivot. For now, though, you can use p2=20.37 as a minimum downside objective.

TLT has rallied modestly after penetrating a longstanding and potentially important Hidden Pivot support at 108.74. It's too early to say whether a bottom is in, but we should remain open-minded to the possibility.  If so, it would leave a 3.56% upside target for interest rates on the Ten-Year Note unfulfilled, albeit with just a small, presumably tolerable discrepancy. TLT would need to hit 115.79, surpassing a peak recorded on June 7, to generate a moderately powerful impulse leg on the daily chart.

A week of pussyfooting at the 21,318 midpoint support has given way to a so-far modest breach, but the damage looks significant enough to eventually send this bitcoin proxy down to at least 15,800, the 'secondary' Hidden Pivot. Further downside progress to D=10,282 is not yet a done deal, however, even though there is an even lower target at 9507 that was noted here earlier. If Bertie should rally first, it would offer short sale rated at around 7.3 at x=26,836, stop 32,355.

I was expecting the Dollar Index to correct down to 94, but bulls have re-asserted themselves well above those levels. Last week's powerful finishing stroke was yet another body blow for the Fed, which is desperately trying to seem in control of the financial system as the U.S. economy sinks into recession. The strong dollar will further depress the earnings of American multinationals while squeezing the air from every debtor on earth who owes dollars. A strong dollar is the last thing anyone other than OPEC wants (they get paid in dollars, which are better than gold these days, and far better than fleetingly popular rubles), but the market-driven uptrend has grown too powerful to suppress with the usual smoke-and-mirrors tactics.  From a technical standpoint, bulls appear to have clinched more upside to at least 106.49 with Friday's leap past the 103.90 midpoint pivot. We have another outstanding target at 112.14 tied to a much larger pattern.

I've held to a 3.24% target for quite some time based on a highly unorthodox ABCD pattern, but it now looks like rates on the Ten-Year Note will achieve a minimum 3.56% before the uptrend exhausts itself.  This would be congruent with a 108.74 downside projection for TLT, an ETF vehicle that tracks the long bond; it is currently trading for around 113.77.  The implication is that if the housing market is not already imploding with the force of a black hole, it will be soon. ______ UPDATE (June 22,, 8:28 p.m.): Slide 'A' up to the one-off shown and the new target at 35.18 was missed by just 2% -- close enough for us to consider it fulfilled. This assumption would be strengthened if the downtrend overshoots d=30.64 on the hourly chart, where a=34.60 pm 6/16 at 10:20 a.m.

Get AAPL right and you get the stock market right. I've repeated this adage many times, and it has been borne out consistently. However, it is about to be crucially tested as the stock falls to a compelling midpoint Hidden Pivot support (p) at 128.24. We'll have to see how sellers interact with the support before we can judge whether more downside to D=104.74 is likely. However, the A-B impulse leg on the weekly chart (inset) is sufficiently powerful to suggest bears eventually will win this battle, even if it takes 2-3 months to play out. That would represent a 42% haircut for the most valuable stock in the world, and a deflationary juggernaut for portfolio managers' balance sheets.