It was three weeks ago that Goldman Sachs' best and brightest put the knock on Apple, sending the stock into a 22-point dive that elicited barely a yawn in these precincts. We can be sure they had their reasons, but it is unlikely anyone at Goldman was actually bearish on the stock. More likely is that they wanted to beat it down in order to shake loose a few shares at relative bargain prices. The low of the move was around 265, but it had no effect on a 313 rally target I'd disseminated to subscribers with the stock trading nearly $40 lower. Rick's Picks stood by this very bullish prediction, however crazy it may have seemed at the time, for technical reasons. Specifically, AAPL had obliterated a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance associated with 313 on the way up. Major and minor targets have changed slightly since, and there is still one at 347.24 if the short-squeeze goes out of control. More immediately, look for the stock to hit 308.50, or if any higher, 322.86. Both of these Hidden Pivots are shown in the chart. _______ UPDATE (May 11, 4:27 p.m.EDT): Hidden Pivot targets are now beside the point, since a rendezvous with all-time highs near 328 has become the main thought on traders' febrile brains. Here's a chart, also presented in the update to my commentary, that shows the muscular reverse head-and-shoulders pattern that currently holds sway. As always, we need only get AAPL right to get the stock market right.
It requires very close attention to trade this nasty little bugger, and that is why I am calling on Pivoteers to post away in the Trading Room if they see any opportunities develop intraday. The pattern shown offers a heat map for doing so, with a 36.90 target that looks very likely to be achieved. That's evident from the way buyers impaled the 33.14 midpoint Hidden Pivot on first encounter. In retrospect, Friday's wicked swoon to the green line was a great opportunity to get long with a 'mechanical' bid, but I was too busy with other tasks to do anything more than be awed by the way this vehicle's canny handlers defenestrated bulls before getting out of the way of a short-covering panic. The lesson here is to realize that any feints lower are fright-mask tactics orchestrated to keep even true believers from making money on an uptrend that is strong, credible and all-too-obvious. _______ UPDATE (May 6, 5:40 p.m. EDT): Here's a bottom-fishing strategy to consider if GDX continues to visit pain on bulls. If the trade triggers, I will establish a tracking position once two or more subscribers have reported doing it. _______UPDATE (May 7, 9:35 p.m.): The rally left our stingy bid choking on dust. The 36.90 target is looking good, but use a 'dynamic' trailing stop if you're in from lower levels. That means shrinking the stop so that it is always equal to a third of the distance between the target and the current high. _______ UPDATE (May 10, 9:55 p.m.): The 'dynamic' stop would have triggered Thursday at 35.09, although this will have no bearing on the odds of the 36.90 target being achieved. If an opportune buying set-up presents itself we may be able to catch a ride, so stay tuned to
Last week's high not only failed by a few points to reach a clear and compelling Hidden Pivot target, it also failed to exceed a small but technically significant peak created in early April at 2975.00 (see inset). The latter shortfall was just ten points, but that's sufficient for us to infer that short-covering grew less urgent at the top of last week's parabola. The futures subsequently came down hard to end the week, but the slide did no serious damage to the hourly chart. It did, however, generate minor impulse legs the whole way down, and that's why there was no compelling reason to cover shorts on the close. Let's see how they open Sunday night before we speculate as to what is likely next. _______ UPDATE (May 4, 9:34 p.m. EDT): Bears failed miserably yet again to drive a stake through this beast's heart, and so we should expect more of the same -- i.e., another burst of irrational exuberance that seems all but certain to hit the 2860.08 target shown in this chart. Short there with a tight stop only if you've made at least $500 on the way up. ______ UPDATE (May 5, 8:36 a.m.): Next stop Willoughby! Bears had such an easy time of it driving this giddy bag of gas to 2860 overnight that I've skipped a point 'A' low at 2788.50 (9:45 a.m. yesterday) in order to calculate a potential short-term, end-of-the-line top at 2874.83. Shorting 2860 overnight was the predictable 3:00 a.m. ordeal we've come to expect, accessible only to subscribers who live outside of U.S. time zones, but the payoff was as much as $5600 on four contracts. The anticipated correction came from a temporary peak at 2865, implying an rABC set-up would have been less stressful than the tightly stopped
My latest commentary tees off on AAPL, reiterating my forecast for an eventual move below $100, but strictly speaking, Friday's price action, nutty as it was, provided no technical basis for predicting that the stock is about to fall apart. It would take a plunge exceeding last Tuesday's 278.20 low to generate a threatening impulse leg on the hourly chart, and although that's hardly inconceivable, we'll let the stock speak for itself before drawing any conclusions. A 'mechanical' buy would trigger at p=285.26, stop 278.65, but I'd suggest spectating just to familiarize yourself with this bold tactic for getting long/short where others fear to tread. _____ UPDATE (May 4, 9:40 p.m.): A deftly engineered plunge on Friday's opening bar exhausted sellers, paving the way for a spectacular 12-point short-squeeze that has left bears off-balance as the new week begins. Monday's action started out with similarly deceptive weakness, just not enough of it to bring the stock down to our infotainment bid at 285.26. The 305.08 target shown in the chart still obtains, but we can use a lesser Hidden Pivot at 302.19 as a minimum upside target for the near term (5-min, A=278.20 on 4/20 at 4:00 p.m.)
On its own, the chart suggests DIA is still a good bet to reach a 250.43 rally target that has kept us confidently on the right side of an otherwise unbelievable uptrend for more than three weeks. Short there as instructed earlier if DIA gets within 0.07 of the target, using puts priced under $1 with just a week left on them. Note, however, that because AAPL and the E-Mini S&Ps failed on Thursday to reach their respective Hidden Pivot rally targets, there's a chance DIA will not reach its projected top at 250.43. Put options will be a riskier buy if DIA spends the day meandering without achieving the target, but if it closes up on the day without having surpassed this week's 247.67 high, don't hesitate to take a few puts home over the weekend.
With so-so earnings out after Thursday's close, DaBoyz conspicuously failed to goose the stock to the 305.08 rally target sent out to you last night. AAPL fell more than $4 shy of that mark and looked unlikely to try again -- unless the stock's resourceful handlers can scare up a gaggle of short-covering maniacs overnight. Meanwhile, the E-Mini S&Ps similarly failed by a few points to reach a clear Hidden Pivot target. Taken together, these small disappointments suggest that the spectacular short-covering panic of the last five weeks may be sputtering out. Friday will probably provide opportunities to make money trading in either direction, but beware of taking long positions over the weekend if the broad averages close higher without having exceeded Thursday's peaks.
A seemingly small trend failure in the E-Mini S&Ps has bearish implications for the stock market as a whole. Thursday's pump-and-dump short-squeeze in the dead of night missed achieving a 2973.25 rally target I'd drum-rolled by eight points. That was no big deal, but a corresponding failure to take out the 2975.00 peak at the left-most edge of the chart (inset) is troubling. That's because, under the rules of the Hidden Pivot Method, healthy rallies must exceed at least one prior peak with each new up-leg in order to renew their energy. That's not what happened here, as you can see. The stubborn peak was tiny, but because of the way it was formed, it has the same weight as any of the larger sub-peaks in the chart. Small failures like this one should not be ignored, and that is why I am cautioning against taking a long position over the weekend if the futures entice with a rally that has not exceeded the 2965.00 recovery high. Regardless, let the buyer beware!
By closing well above a clear Hidden Pivot resistance at 2921.75 given here earlier, the futures all but clinched a further push to at least 2973.25. I am recommending shorting there only if, guided by my insanely bullish targets, you've banked at least $1000 of profits on the way up. I expect a tradeable pullback from 2973.25, but this should not be regarded as low-hanging fruit. I say this because there are so many bears in the Rick's Picks Trading Room who have been salivating over the possibility that this psychotic short-squeeze rally, the most powerful ever witnessed in U.S. markets, is nearing an end. Such skepticism is what has in fact propelled it, and it is far more widespread than just the chat room. Rest assured that as long as there even a few bears still standing, the craziness will continue. Above 2973.25, I would suggest putting aside Hidden Pivot targets and substituting the obvious benchmarks that the mouth-breathers will be focused on: 3000, and thence 3121, where the futures made an important top in early March on the way down. There is also a 'magic number' at 2997.00 that, although not a resistance, meets criteria that I have been experimenting with for the last couple of months. _______ UPDATE (Apr 30, 9:04 a.m. EDT): The futures have pulled back sharply from a wee-hours, short-squeeze peak at 2965.00. A missed tally target, especially one so clear as this one, should always be taken as a sign of weakness, notwithstanding the fact that in this case, it revealed itself in the context of a world-beating rally. Think of it as Garbo's ominous cough in the second reel of Camille. It certainly did deny us an opportunity to get short on our terms. Oh well.
A trade posted in the chat room at 1:52 p.m. was showing a $182 gain at the bell, with 75% of it exited. Its purpose was twofold: 1) to provide a low-risk, low-cost 'starter' position in a popular gold vehicle; and 2) to show the many subscribers who have recently signed on how they can profit and have fun doing it by tuning to the chat room. On both counts, this gambit was a success, since GDX took off toward the end of the session. Here's the recommendation that went out initially. Judge for yourself whether you could have done it: "If [the stock] has gone no lower than 32.82, buy-stop [yourself into] 400 shares at 33.02. Place a stop-loss on all of it at 32.81, worked against an o-c-o order to exit 200 shares at 33.20. This will be a 'starter' long position." Many subscribers reported doing the trade as directed. Looking ahead, we'll shoot for the fences -- in this case a 'D' target at 38.01 (30-min, A=29.55 on 4/21). Stay tuned for possible adjustments, however, since we may do a covered write with call options if and when GDX hits the first significant resistance enroute to the target, a midpoint Hidden Pivot at 35.42. That will be my minimum upside objective if the stock closes above x=34.12 for two consecutive days. If you'd rather take the money and run, by all means do so at will. Rest assured, there will be other similar opportunities down the road. _______ UPDATE (Apr 30, 12:40 p.m. EDT): My bad, since I drifted off to sleep last night intending to put a stop-loss on the position. This morning was so hectic that I barely gave GDX a thought. Exit now, around 32.58, since the stock has stopped being fun for the
During the more than two weeks my bullish forecast for the E-Mini S&Ps has fixated on a 2921.75 target, the futures have mostly acted constipated, but also at times tedious, violent (in both directions), turgid and deceptive. One thing that hasn't changed is the chart itself, which never wavered from the once-laughable target no matter how grim the news. There were skeptics in the Rick's Picks Trading Room when the broad averages dove last week for two straight sessions. More recently, however, with four days of upward progress, a presumptive finishing stroke to 2921.75 now looks like a given. It is no longer a matter of whether the target will be reached, but how soon. Some in the trading room speculated it would occur as early as Monday night. This tells me that one of two things is about to happen: 1) the rally will die without having reached the target. I give this scenario a 15% chance; or 2) buyers will soon reach 2921.75, then blow past it with such force as to leave us wondering whether new all-time highs are coming. If this proves to be the case, be aware that it will have nothing to do with the ridiculous, conflicted reasons the MSM is sure to concoct. We are witnessing a powerful short-squeeze is all, even if the dim bulbs who invent the news each day are incapable of choking out those two words, and even if none of them will ever understand that the ups and downs of the stock market are not driven by the economy, but the other way around. With that in mind, realize that the Wall Street operators who have been nurturing and manipulating this short-covering binge are not about to squash it with heavy-handed selling, at least not until the last
