E-Mini S&P

Price action on Sunday nights is so heavily manipulated and predatory that you can usually bet it will be reversed by Monday's opening bell. Be that as it may,  the trends appear felicitous as of around 8:30 pm EDT. August Gold is up 6.70, correcting off a 1599.20 (all-time!!) high, and the E-Mini S&Ps are down 6.50 points -- seemingly attuned, even if only momentarily, to the realities of a lame economy rather than to the wantonly haphazard flow of OPM.

Friday's price action tediously marked time, further solidifying the bold impulse leg begun three weeks ago from nearly 60 points lower.  Entry into this pattern at 1319.75 has already been tripped, so any opportunities to get long signaled now on the very lesser charts are fair game. FYI, on the three-minute chart even in retrospect, such opportunities were difficult to find. This implies we may need to drill still lower, to perhaps a one-minute time frame, to find the opportunity we're looking for. Because the week-ending short-squeeze came in the final hour of the session, bears are likely to be on the hook when trading resumes Sunday evening. Although DaBoyz who dominate on Sundays habitually try to maneuver index futures lower, they may have difficulty doing so this week.  Accordingly, if the futures pull back no farther than 2-3 points, shorts had better take cover ahead of Monday morning's opening and bulls should trade more boldly than usual. _______ UPDATE (8:45 p.m. EDT):  The futures have been down as much as 10 points so far tonight, implying DaSleazeballs are having difficulty maneuvering stocks low enough to exhaust sellers as they do nearly every Sunday.  If DaBoyz should briefly lose control, keep the 1280.50 target in mind that was flagged here a while back, since it's still valid.  So is the midpoint at 1304.25, which explains why the futures have been dancing around that number for the last four days.

Yesterday's gratuitous price hump left a 1280.50 downside target intact.  Odds that it will be reached today or Monday have shortened now that its sibling midpoint support at 1304.00 has been decisively exceeded.  Traders can bottom-fish with a stop-loss as tight as 1279.75, since the target is not only clear, but located "in the middle of nowhere" just as we prefer.  Pivoteers take note: Leveraging a "camouflaged" turn on the lesser charts will nearly always be the less risky way to play.

The futures looked primed for a dive to 1280.50 by week's end, if not sooner. That's the Hidden Pivot target of the pattern shown, and as of late Wednesday night its sibling midpoint at 1304.00 has already been breached by 1.50 points. That's not quite enough to clinch the implied plunge, but just a tick or two more would shorten the odds. Alternatively, it would take a print exceeding a tiny peak at 1328.50 made July 11 on the way down to put buyers back in charge of short-term price movement.

The charts included with today's bullion touts are intended to stretch the bullish imagination, so be sure to take a look.  The E-Mini S&Ps, on the other hand, look like they're about to stumble.

Because the day’s touts had anticipated explosive moves in Silver and Gold that were in fact occurring, we took extra time to scrutinize the charts of both. Silver in particular was on a rampage, having exceeded the extremely bullish target I’d provided by five cents. Owing to the “chopped liver rule,” this had bullish implications going forward, and we explored several ways in which they might be tradable. To round out the session, we also pondered gold and the E-Mini S&Ps. The latter was in the throes of a 17.00-point surge that missed a touted target at 1328.75 by a single point.

The weekly chart shows how swings of as much as 130 points -- that's about 1000 Dow points! -- could amount to little more than noise as the summer grinds on. More immediately, the hourly chart is working on a bullish impulse leg that has short-term follow-through potential to as high as 1328.70. Key resistance lies at 1318.00, the sibling midpoint, but once it's breached, the rest of the trip could be a romp.  Both targets are predicated on the survival of a so-far point 'C' low at at 1307.25 recorded on the hourly chart at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

Index futures are getting savaged shortly before 3 a.m. EDT. The E-Mini S&P has been down as much as 12 points so far, coming within a couple of points of a target that had been my worst-case for the near-term an hour earlier.  If it gives way, a Hidden Pivot target 16 points below it would come in play (as shown in the chart accompanying the tout).

Yesterday's low mildly overshot the 1317.25 target, telegraphing the weakness that has ensued. It projects most immediately to the 1304.00 Hidden Pivot target of the pattern shown, although an upthrust that hits 1327.25 first would signal a likely end to the good feelings bears may have imbibed from the nearly 50-point selloff begun off Friday's opening feint higher. Below 1304.00, the selling could snowball to at least 1288.50, but there are few promising structural supports all the way down to 1255.