Rick’s Picks

July Silver's weekly chart allows room for a 34% rally to 36.96.  In order to extrapolate a comparable move in gold, we need the help of an extremely gnarly pattern on the continuous monthly chart that projects a 28% rally to 2995.00 (A= 681.00 on 10/31/08, B=2063 on 8/31/20). More immediately, July Silver's correction from the 30.19 high recorded on April 12 appears bound for a minimum 25.90. (This would imply that gold's correction has further to go.) The provenance of this target is shown in the thumbnail chart. The decisive downside breach of the rABC pattern's midpoint pivot (28.04) implies not only that D=25.90 will be reached, but that an intervening rally to x=29.12 would offer a tempting opportunity to get short 'mechanically'.

Although the downtrend's stall at 40.24 suggests the midpoint support might hold, my bias is bearish due to a silver chart that suggests bullion's correction has further to go. That implies sellers will breach p, headed to at least p2=38.00, or possibly to d=35.77.  That is as bad as I could see, as the chart suggests, although it is not theoretically the worst case, which would be 31.27 (on the daily chart, use reverse a=43.89 on 4/13/23). The good news is that the associated p at 37.99 would offer another potential turnaround spot where we could attempt to bottom-fish aggressively with risk under very tight control. There is also the possibility that p=40,24 will hold and the GDXJ, along with gold and silver futures, will break out to new highs. For that to happen after so fleeting a shallow a correction would be very bullish.

So much for the extravagantly bullish speculation that I allowed in the last few touts and in a recent commentary. This vehicle continues to look like hell, and so we'll revert to the still unachieved downside target at 80.84 as a minimum objective. An upthrust of 4.44 points would be reason to open our imaginations to the possibility of a bullish reversal, and it would shift our trading bias to bullish. However, until such time as that happens, there is no reason to think that the powerful rally in Q3 was other than a nasty tease.

The chart above shows RCA's spectacular climb to the Mother of All Tops in 1929. The larger chart that frames it shows what Nvidia shares would have to do to replicate the peaks and troughs that set up RCA's plunge into hell. Notice that the stock's final top (#4) was just marginally higher than one recorded six months earlier. NVDA's chart would look nearly identical if the stock were to hit 1000 in May. It got a potential running start on this with last week's 120-point leap to 877.35. Nvidia is the dominant supplier of hardware and software for AI and makes a good comparison with RCA. The latter had a commanding position in one of the hottest games in town, home entertainment. The company's console radios and record players provided a big step up from the days when a spinet piano in the parlor was the main source of music in the home. How Hot Is Nvidia? So how hot is Nvidia? Two months ago, it became the third company in U.S. history to achieve a $2 trillion valuation. Moreover, it reached that benchmark just 180 days after hitting the $1 trillion mark. That compares with 500 days for the two biggest companies, Apple and Microsoft. Nvidia is also regarded as one of the most exciting places to work in Silicon Valley at a time when many firms have been downsizing. Half of the firm's workers reportedly made more than $228,000 last year. The company's hold on investors' imagination of the future has produced a buying mania in the stock that is every bit as heated as the one that occurred in RCA nearly a century ago. Will their charts ultimately coincide, implying a bloodbath ahead? Quite possibly not, especially if the coincident charts become too widely observed in

Although 2024's steep rally from $69 failed just shy of an important Hidden Pivot target at 88.54 (see inset), I expect a second-wind push to get there, surpassing the key external peak at 88.31 recorded in June 2022.  That would create an impulse leg of weekly-chart degree sufficiently powerful to push crude to $100, a psychologically terrifying level in a world where inflation has stubbornly refused to cool off. I am bullish on crude in part because the recent high occurred in too obvious a place -- i.e., slightly below the D target of a pattern that virtually every trader would have observed, and less than a dollar below the June 2022 peak. This doubly obvious resistance' begs to be tested, and so it shall be. _______ UPDATE (Apr 28): The 88.54 rally target is still my minimum upside objective for the near term, but here's why the futures may have to come down to 80.39 first.  The equivalent numbers for the June contract, respectively, are 88.31 and 80.03.

The stock's steepening fall last week put more distance between it and the all-time high a month ago at 430.82. That was just 24 cents from a longstanding target I'd said could cap the bull market begun in 2009. Perhaps it has, although I'd like to see MSFT fall at least 30%, to $300, before I consider the prediction fulfilled. Odds of this will shorten if the new week begins with just slight weakness. Anything exceeding 397.21 to the downside would breach three (!) external lows on the daily chart, creating a powerful impulse leg with devastating potential.

The previous tout suggested the dollar could range-trade for a long time between 100 and 110.  However, if it merely pushes above the 107.99 'external' peak shown in the chart, that would command our attention and respect. It would also be something to fear, since a resurgent dollar would put the global economy back on a path to the deflationary bust I've predicted for many years. A rally piercing the 107.99 resistance would be all but certain to hit p=109.66, providing a test of the most important resistance the Dollar Index has faced in years.

The predicted fall to at least 5055.50 occurred with a selling climax on thin volume Thursday night. This set up an all-but-certain relapse after a brief flurry of buying at the opening bell on Friday. The renewed weakness has greased the track for a further fall to p2=4916.50 as the new week begins, but more likely to D=4777.50. A rally first to x=5194.50, however unlikely, would trigger an appealing 'mechanical' short that you shouldn't pass up if you trade this vehicle. Also, the D target can be bottom-fished with a reverse-pattern trigger that can be calculated using an intraday chart.

Bulls continued to lose ground last week, but the weakness was not quite sufficient to push this vehicle beneath the 82.42 point 'C' low of the bullish pattern we have been using speculatively. If the pattern were to hold sway, which is looking increasingly doubtful, an extended uptrend could take TLT as high as 150.22. That implies a spectacular bull market, one driven by vanishing inflation and expansionary yield curves. This seems so unlikely at this point that we should view any upturn in TLT with caution, if not to say suspicion, Realize in any event that it would not be unusual for a bull market to be born in obscurity and for no apparent reason.