Webinar

This session was open to all Rick’s Picks subscribers, since the focus was on leveraging a cluster of Hidden Pivots that, taken together, strongly hint of an important top. We traced the provenance of two such targets in the E-Mini S&P and also found a new one in the Mini-Dow at 12409. Not wanting to waste the opportunity presented by a possible last-gasp rally, we looked for camouflage entry spots for bullish trades in the mini-index futures. Even if the stock market doesn’t collapse after hitting our targets, we expect to make money on short trades by managing risk scrupulously.

Hitting price bullseyes may look impressive, but the real strength of the Hidden Pivot Method lies in its ability to correctly and confidently predict trends of different degree. During this class, we pondered some of the subtlest indicators imaginable on the chart of the Dollar Index. Although this vehicle recently turned from a low that had been precisely predicted, the question remains as to whether the rally will turn out to be the beginning of a major trend change. As you will see, a clear answer may lie in the very subtlest inflections of the lesser charts.

This session is interesting for its failures – mainly, to find a good trade no matter how hard we looked. Poring over charts for the E-Mini S&Ps, Gold and the Dollar Index, although we were able to precisely predict key price reversal in each – particularly reversals off midpoint supports -- downshifting to lesser charts revealed few distinctive camouflage opportunities if we strictly adhered to the rules. But with so many vehicles to trade, and so many opportunities in the course of an average day, why settle for trades that offer less-than-great odds?

Rick’s Picks holds a short position in the QQQs, and although we should like to imagine that it will prove to have been initiated precisely at the Mother of All Bear Rally Tops, we found reasons in the hourly E-Mini S&P chart to think we may not get so lucky. We also looked closely at Gold’s charts and came away with little doubt that prices will be moving higher over the foreseeable future. Finally, and alas, a real-time futures trade on which we risked a paltry three ticks came a cropper.

This one-hour demonstration from Friday (2/25) begins with a look at some key concepts related to the Hidden Pivot Method and to the “camouflage” trading technique. We then segue to real-time charts, looking for actual trading opportunities in such popular vehicles as Comex Gold, E-Mini S&Ps and the Mini-Dow during market hours.

Although we were minutes behind some excellent opportunitites to get short in the Mini-S&P and the Mini-Dow, their respective downtrends played out in ways that validated our bearish outlook in real time. The weakness in these vehicles represented an ostensible follow-through to the previous day’s sharp selloff, and so we were especially interested in determining whether the decline was strong enough to imply a resumption of the secular bear market. The jury is still out on that question, but there were nonetheless encouraging signs that this was the case.

With major, long-term targets not far above in several key vehicles that we monitor closely, we double-checked the Hidden Pivots not only for accuracy but for coincidence, since they could conceivably produce a very important top for the stock market within a week or less. Indeed, the S&Ps, Dow and bellwether Apple are all bound for ‘D’ rally targets that could all be hit around the same time. Meanwhile, although we looked for a real-time trade in the E-Mini S&P, the lesson here was that it is sometimes best to do nothing.

A nifty trick you can perform with the Hidden Pivot Method is predicting long periods of tedium based on the presence of “dueling impulse legs.” We found them in copious supply in the chart of the Dollar Index, but also, correspondingly, in the euro’s intraday and daily charts. The markets were flatlining on this day, but we tried nonetheless to force a bullish trade in the E-Mini S&P. Alas, it continued lower without tripping a “camouflage” entry signal. We also discovered a possible breakdown shaping up in Crude, with a similar pattern already developing in Copper.

A slow day on Wall Street provided a perfect opportunity to test the ability of camouflage tactics to deliver profitable trades even when “nothing” is happening. Earlier that morning, during an impromptu webinar, we’d already found trades in, respectively, Comex Silver and the E-Mini S&Ps. However, this session allowed us to revisit both vehicles to try again. Since a goal of these sessions is to decide whether to trade a signaled opportunity, we decided to pass up a trade in Gold for reasons that even seasoned Pivoteers will find instructive.