E-Mini S&P

If you can spot a logical place for a major top in the sociopathic price action of the last six weeks, you may be hallucinating.  The futures are near the middle of their range for that period, seemingly hell-bent on going at least somewhat higher before something more interesting happens.  Night owls seeking easy opportunity should look for it on the 3-minute chart, which yields an 1871.75 target and a midpoint pivot at 1865.75 as a possible range for nocturnal activity. (A=1852.00 at 2:00 p.m. ET; B=18764.00 at 2:33 p.m.; and C=1859.75 at 3:00 p.m.)

There was nothing impressive about the wheezy, short-squeezy spasms that produced yesterday's very modest gain. The biggest rally of the day was accomplished by running stops placed beneath Monday's low. With few bulls still on board at that point, it required little volume to goose the futures into a 17-point waft. This little game was being repeated in after-hours trading Tuesday night. Notice in the chart (see inset) how the low of the rally was a single tick beneath a low made three hours earlier.  Again, this shook out the bulls, lightening the load for the rally that has ensued. But as of around 8:30 p.m., DaBoyz had extracted a gain of just 6 points for their troubles, casting sufficient doubt on the veracity of the rally to shorten its life span.  Night owls should pass up a second chance to short this dud at 'p', but if DaBoyz wax bold and push this hoax to the 1857.25 target, you can short there with a stop-loss as tight as 1.00 point. _______ UPDATE (10:03 a.m. ET):  A new B-C has shifted the target north to 1859.25.   It feels doubtful that DaBoyz can muster the wattage to reach 1859.75, so any shorting should be down with-the-trend. I'd further suggest zooming down to the 5-minute in search of  'camouflage' opportunities.

The night shift, which attracts some of the most talented dirtballs in the trading world, is having trouble walking the futures higher Monday night. So far, a 4.00-point mark-up is all they've been able to extort from widows, orphans and pensioners who evidently still don't know that the broad averages have gotten pounded for two straight days. More seriously, in fact, it is short-covering that is providing the lift right now, and if bears don't know enough to stay cool and back off, they deserve to get buried by the next avalanche.  This is all speculative on my part, mind you, but notice how little selling it would take to generate a robustly bearish impulse leg on the daily chart (see inset).  Price action could therefore turn very erratic between now and Tuesday's opening bell, but please note: This is when you can flourish if you apply the simple rules of 'camouflage' in looking for tradable impulse legs amidst the flux of fear and hysteria.  Accordingly, I'll suggest monitoring the hourly chart and trading on the 3-minute, if and when any of the key lows that I've flagged is breached. _______ UPDATE (12:07 p.m. ET): DaBoyz have popped the futures for a so-far 16-point short squeeze off a deftly engineered, spike low.  The result is a robustly bullish impulse leg on the hourly chart that could yield a trade from the long side (A=1830.75; B=not yet formed).

Although my tout for Friday anticipated the bull-trap opening, the actual head-fake fell three points shy of the 1895.50 pivot where I'd suggested getting short. The subsequent collapse came within two ticks of a 0.618 retracement of the rally begun on March 27 from 1834.00, but I doubt that this Fibonacci level will hold.  It was a speculative buy on Friday, although it would have been risky to carry the resulting, marginally profitable long position over the weekend. Fibonacci levels and Hidden Pivots aside, you should consider bottom-fishing today at the trendline, which, depending on the time of day, will come in anywhere between around 1841.75 and, toward the end of the session, 1843.00.

Yesterday's whack-o price action was marginally tradable, although not via a plan one could have formulated the night before. Check the chat room discussion around 11:56 and you'll see how we did it, leveraging the 1877.75 target of a minor correction. This wasn't exactly a buy-and-hold opportunity, just an attempt to horn in on gratuitous price action driven mainly by not-so-bright machines. I have nothing more to say about the futures at the moment, other than there are higher targets outstanding. Stay close to the chat room, though, if you're interested in more-timely advice. As long as this gas-bag as moving, we may as well try to exploit it. _______ UPDATE (9:23 a.m. EDT): Onward and upward. This morning's pre-opening bubble-up points to a minor but nonetheless tradable top 1895.50, subject to a midpoint impediment at 1892.00.

The futures continued to take mincing, marginally tradable steps from one rally target to the next, most recently exceeding by a single point an 1885.25 Hidden Pivot I'd disseminated in the chat room Wednesday morning. This occurred in the final minutes of the session -- too late to offer a comfortable shorting opportunity. The next rally target lies at 1889.75 (see inset), and although we've grown accustomed to seeing these numbers work fairly precisely, I'd be the first to concede that it is not always easy to catch a ride to them. This opportunity will probably appeal best to night owls, but if you plan to use 'camouflage' to get aboard, I'd suggest doing your hunting on the 1-minute chart rather than the 15-minute displayed.  The bigger-picture target, to remind you, is 1933.25, implying that your trading bias should be bullish for now, even if you're inclined to attempt scalping from the short side at minor rally targets.

Traders looking for actionable advice in real time might want to consider following me on Twitter by clicking here. Anyone dialed in yesterday would have received the following tweet at 1:16 p.m. EDT:  'E-Mini S&P: So-far high somewhat shy of still-good 1881.25 target. Pullback to Hidden Pivot 'sibling' at 1870.25 is spec buy w/ tight stop.'  As you can see in the accompanying chart, the futures pulled back to exactly 1870.00 before embarking on a 9.50-point rally that could have been worth as much as $950 to anyone long just two contracts. Ordinarily I would now suggest reversing long positions and going short at the 1181.25 target, which was missed by 2.50 points. However, although the target itself remains viable, any hysterics overnight or at the opening bell could make it tricky to squeeze off the short with the very tight stop-loss that I usually advise. Looking ahead, a decisive move today past the target would portend still more strength.  If it comes, we've got a 1933.25 rally target to inform our trading decisions.  As I noted here earlier, I am very wary of the possibility that a run-up to this Hidden Pivot, representing a new all-time high, would be a bull trap. We'll want to try shorting there regardless, so stay tuned if you're interested.

Coin-toss odds will obtain once again as the stock markets enter a presumptive seventh straight week of sideways tedium. My gut feeling is that even if this is a consolidation rather than a distribution, the rally that's coming will go only as high as needed to trap bulls badly. That could require little more than a 30-40 point move above the old record highs -- about as much as DaBoyz may be able to squeeze from shorts, given the unlikelihood of genuinely positive economic news. The chart (see inset) shows a 1933.50 target that we have considered before as a possible last gasp for the five-year-old bull market. The target looks just as compelling on the intraday charts -- in this case, a 240-minute -- as on the daily where we last considered it. Get free instant access to Rick’s Picks – no credit card necessary – by clicking here.

The futures bottomed yesterday less than a point from an 1833.25 target given here a day earlier. This permitted the timely covering of shorts initiated from near 1850, or possibly from around 1845 if entered just before Thursday's opening.  Subscribers who were in the chat room ahead of the opening bell could have hitched a ride -- worth as much as $550 per contract over the 15-minute life of the trade -- since I posted explicit, step-by-step details in real time, from entry to exit.  The  bounce from the low carried 14 points, and although the relapse that followed wiped out all but a single point of that gain, the futures ended the day on a slightly bullish note.  True, the larger trend is bearish and projects to 1819.75, the minor uptrend shown could still reach 1851.00 if buyers can break free of the 1844.00 midpoint pivot that stymied them yesterday. Either of these Hidden Pivots is shortable, but I'd suggest using the 'camouflage' technique, since the 1851.00 target that is going out with tonight's newsletter could draw some front-runners.  Want to check out the details of yesterday's trade, as given in the chat room?  Get free instant access to Rick's Picks -- no credit card necessary -- by clicking here.