Priceline

A chat room denizen seemed concerned that PCLN was getting sacked Monday in after-hours trading.  As you can see, however, the shakedown -- and that's what it is -- has not even broken the bulllish trendline from mid-June's low.  (Note: the green bars represent after-hours price action.)  This evening's so-far low represents a $13.50 discount off Monday's settlement price, but it's possible the dirtballs who created this air pocket have even more ambitious theft in mind.  If this proves to be the case, look to do your bottom-fishing at the 1189.93 target shown. I've set an alert myself, since the target may provide an opportunity to leg into a vertical bull call spread if the stock bounces from the pivot as we might expect. _______ UPDATE (July 16, 12:07 a.m. EDT):  The 1189.93 target remains viable in theory, but it must be noted that bears struggled too hard yesterday trying to take this wind-bag lower,  even after DaBoyz had sandbagged bulls on a revved up opening bar. _______ UPDATE (July 16, 6:12 p.m.): The nasty head-fake on the  opening bar was bullishly impulsive nonetheless, so traders should use this pattern on the 60-minute chart to project a follow-through rally target: A=1219.16 on July 15 at 11:30 a.m.: B= 1243.26 on July 16 at 10:30 a.m.; C=still undetermined, but tentatively 1223.00; a move below 1219.16 would negate the pattern. Alternatively, a move lower could evince a tradable bounce from 1218.02, the midpoint support, on the hourly chart, of A=1258.66 on 7/7._______ UPDATE (July 18 3:02 a.m.) Wednesday's very nasty head-fake altered our point 'C', raising the correction target to 1192.77.  This Hidden Pivot may prove useful for setting up a 'jackpot' trade using expiring options.

There is at least $27 of immediate upside potential in Priceline's daily chart, since that's the distance between Thursday's settlement price and a clear-as-day midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 1270.59.  I cannot predict how the stock will open Monday morning, but if there's weakness, I'll recommend bidding for some 1267.50-1270.00 call spreads. Specifically, you should try to buy it for 0.20 or less.  I'll be in the chat room to assist in this task if things don't go our way, and I may even suggest using a spread strategy -- legging on some butterflies, for instance -- to get a cheap play on a PCLN moon shot to the 1358 target associated with the midpoint pivot noted above. _______ UPDATE (July 7, 6:35 p.m. ET): Our plan was a non-starter yesterday, since Priceline bucked a weak stock market to surge $20 in the early going.  The very bullish targets noted above remain valid, but we'll remain buyers only on weakness, so stay tuned. _______ UPDATE (July 8, 11:50 a.m. ET): Priceline's impressive plunge -- $42 so far this morning -- has left the rally targets given above theoretically intact, but practically speaking they are probably  toast. The fact that the reversal has occurred without the stock's having quite reached the midpoint resistance at 1270.59 is a potentially bearish development for the long term.  From a Hidden Pivot perspective, Priceline's daily chart is in 'dueling mode', with the edge still going to bulls. However, the daily chart says wait till 1146.48 is reached to the downside before you attempt bottom-fishing (A=1378.96 on 3/6). You'll see that if that midpoint Hidden Pivot doesn't hold, PCLN could fall to D=1000.63. _______ UPDATE (July 10, 10:43 p.m.): None of the recent downstrokes have breached prior lows, suggesting that still deserve the benefit of the

We took a flyer yesterday on some Priceline calls -- a trial run ahead of a new Rick's Picks offering, the 'Friday Jackpot' bet.  This is a highly leveraged speculation using put or call options that are about to expire not in days or weeks, but in mere hours. The underlying stocks that we use include such lunatic-powered high-flyers as Priceline, Apple, Google and Netflix. We've seen those stocks trace out price swings of $30 or more intraday. When that happens, options that can be purchased for under $1.00 can soar to $6, $8, $10 or even more. Yesterday's trade was a bust, as most such trades will be. Subscribers reported buying imminently expiring PCLN 1235 calls that were $30 out-of-the-money for as little as 0.95.  Alas, the calls went no higher than 1.48, then crashed too quickly for an easy exit.  Our standard practice, whenever possible, is to sell half the calls at twice the price paid for them, effectively reducing our risk for the remainder of the day to zero.  At that point traders are holding a free ticket on a 20-to-1 nag.  Not bad odds, since stocks appear to be at least somewhat more predictable than horses. Moreover, we still hold the calls bought yesterday, and even though they died in the stretch, they could conceivably come back to life if the whack-jobs who trade Priceline are feeling antsy on an expiration Friday, as they so often are. I'll be calling the trades in a virtual room tomorrow starting at 9 a.m. EDT. Only paid subscribers will have access to the room, but if you'd like a front row seat and don't subscribe, click here for a free two-week trial, no credit card necessary.

Priceline went on the warpath yesterday when its deft handlers used a gap-down opening to set the hook for 45 minutes of frantic short-covering. The resulting rally was a humdinger -- a 30-pointer that barely corrected before the squeeze resumed in the final half-hour of the session.  The dust had not settled by day's end, and the stock looked bound tomorrow for the 1259.50 target shown.  That would equate to a nearly 4% move, with most of it taking place in under two hours.  I wouldn't deign to suggest that getting aboard for the implied last 10 points will be easy, but night owls could get their chance using a 'camouflage'-style entry off the very lesser charts.  _______ UPDATE (12:31 p.m.):  The rampage had little trouble exceeding my target, implying still higher prices are coming.  Now, the two-minute chart yields a Hidden Pivot projection of 1276.83. This is contingent on a move through the midpoint pivot at 1262.88. That last number will remain viable as a minimum upside projection as long as 1248.93 is not exceeded to the downside.

We've seen Hidden Pivot targets work precisely so often that when the low of Priceline's $133 power dive missed our target by $3, as happened yesterday, some of you may have wondered how we could have gone so far wrong.  There are a couple of reasons, actually. For one, the target lay just 28 cents from a key low at 1103.90 recorded back in February that would have been as obvious to traders as a Times Square billboard. As such, it promised support and a possible bounce, and that's why the stock was more or less ordained to trampoline from just above or below it. Another factor that may have worked against pinpoint accuracy is that the A-B impulse leg was a real dog, with nary a qualifying 'external' low anywhere in the picture. Under the circumstances, expecting this ersatz AB leg to have produced a dead-center bullseye at the D target would be like expecting a hunchbacked dwarf to win the Miss America Pageant. All that aside, the stock's nearly $40 rebound in the space of two hours may have seemed impressive, but we shouldn't fail to notice that it failed to surpass an 'external' peak at 1149.98 made earlier in the day on the way south.  Did buyers chicken out? Will the shortfall prove fatal? Rather than speculate, we'll simply wait to see whether they succeed today. If they do, with a high that only slightly exceeds 1149.98 before pulling back, it could set up a low-risk buying opportunity. If I'm in the chat room at that time, please nudge me and I'll show you exactly how to leverage it. _______ UPDATE (11:23 p.m. ET):  The nearly $60 rally from Monday's lows may seem impressive, but one must zoom all the way down to the 30-minute chart to

The stock need only eke out a small gain to turn the daily chart hell of bullish, but if we are intent on catching the next significant rally, it should await either a proper signal that would follow a b-c pullback; or the availability of camouflage on the lesser charts, following a marginal upside penetration of the 1235.09 high (see inset). There is no certainty that either will occur, and if PCLN instead simply falls, it could go to 1165.72 before finding traction, or even to 1093.35, worst-case. _______ UPDATE (11:27 p.m. ET):  DaBoyz pushed this mirage above peak #1 (see inset), setting up a possible 'buy' signal for camouflageurs. What I like about the impulse leg (A=1204.37) is that it exceeded the prior peak by just $2 -- barely noticeable as a breakout. It is, though, and that's why any legit b-c pullback should be bought. _______UPDATE (April 28, 12:05 a.m.):  Friday's plunge mooted the potential buying opportunity described above.  The next, I surmise, will come at the 1104.18 target shown. Until then, and barring an impulsive rally on the hourly chart, the stock's an enticing short.

Although we sometimes look to trade this monster on Fridays using expiring weekly options, the bullish pattern shown has enough clarity to loosen up a little and trade it midweek. As you can see, there is decent 'camouflage' cover to be had without zooming down to the one minute chart. This 10-minute picture contains an impulse leg subtle enough (see inset) to have generated an entry signal that would have attracted few competitors. It also was ideal for a 'timed' buy-stop entry, where one jumps into the position and gives it perhaps 15-30 seconds to go into-the-black before bailing out. ______ UPDATE (10:27 a.m. ET): A hawk-eyed subscribers has noted in the chat room that Priceline topped this morning within pennies of the 1205.46 target of the pattern shown in the chart (the target itself had been left unspecified; the subscriber simply worked the numbers).  Although the pattern played out exactly as anticipated in the chart, the rally was tradable only if you were awake and very alert overnight. Would it have been worth it to slog through hours of tedium?  Judge for yourself: 400 shares entered at the implied 1186.55 entry price shown would have produced an overnight profit of $8000 if you exited at the target.

Priceline collapsed without having reached a 1286.11 rally target I'd flagged. This implies that the nasty downtrend from early March's 1379 high could still have a ways to go. Most immediately, that implies a further fall to at least 1116.16, a Hidden Pivot support associated with the pattern shown (see inset). A rally to 1196.45 should be shorted via camouflage, but we will also try some tightly stopped bottom-fishing if and when 1116 is reached.

Elsewhere on this page, I have raised the possibility of DaBoyz hauling this stock and Google back down below $1000, so that they can start pumping them full of hot air again. From a technical standpoint, the $200 selloff we've seen so far in PCLN would appear to have further to go, since yesterday's dive exceeded a clear Hidden Pivot support at 1205 (see inset). My guess is that this will increase the magnetic pull of  February's key low at $1104, making a test of support there more likely, if not necessarily inevitable. If so, traders will have opportunities to position from either side, bullish or bearish, all the way down.  Two places where you might look for a tradable bounce in the days ahead:  1183.15 and 1126.29.  Both are Hidden Pivot support taken from the 15-minute chart, where a=1316.99 (3/21) and b=1203.28 on 3/25). ________ UPDATE (March 27, 8:22 p.m. EDT): With the stock on its way to an 1156.41 low yesterday, the Hidden Pivot at 1183.15 evinced no bounce whatsoever.  That will shorten the odds of more downside to the next important target beneath it, 1126.29.  Cautious bottom-fishing there is warranted, although you could get more aggressive if you've been short for at least part of the ride lower. Bulls would show some life if they can pop the stock above 1210.80 by Monday. _______ UPDATE (11:38 p.m.): DaBoyz did in fact pop the stock -- all the way to 1214.63.  Although I remain skeptical that there is any real buying power behind the move, we'll need to respect it nonetheless because PCLN had become so heavily oversold. If you're keen to speculate on more upside, I'd use abc patterns on the 5-minute chart for leverage. _______ UPDATE (April 1, 10:30 p.m.): One needn't have zoomed any lower