Although Gold was nearly flat for the week, a fist-pump on Wednesday precisely to the 4890.10 secondary Hidden Pivot shortened the odds of a continuation to a by-now familiar target at 5144.00. Although a pullback to the red line would trigger a 'mechanical' buy, stop 4467.50, unless you know how to craft a camo trigger, I'll recommend doing this trade only at the green line (x=4382.40), stop 4128.40, even if the futures are unlikely to fall that far to get a running start on d.
Although the blitzkrieg rallies of late 2025 are fading from memory, the bull market that energized them is still alive, although shuffling along with a more mature gait and stride. Bulls are certainly taking their time getting to the 86.105 garget shown, but it seems likely to be hit later in April. This event will provide an important test of a key Hidden Pivot resistance, since the target is the terminus of a clear and compelling rABC (reverse) pattern. It should offer tradeable resistance in any case, but we should hope for a decisive breakout above it if the long-term bull is to be presumed viable ahealthy.nd
GDXJ popped last week to within an inch of a longstanding target at 133.49, and although it did not quite reach it, price action was sufficiently robust to imply that a new, more ambitious target at 139.49 is now likely to be achieved. It is derived from a lower point 'a' within a larger structure that allows running room to as high as 150.33. First things first, however, so we'll keep our focus on the pattern shown for trading purposes. I don't often recommend 'mechanical' buying at the red line, here 121.17, but in this case it looks worth a try. A 115.07 atop-loss would apply. _______ UPDATE (Apr 17): Bulls achieved solid gains last week, although without dipping to our niggardly bid at 121.17. The forecast provided above remains viable.
It is neither bulls nor bears who move the markets, but crooks, mostly. Spectacular but fleeting rallies draw nearly all of their buying power from panicky short covering that is easily triggered and deftly harvested. I have previously discussed this phenomenon, which is most visible when stocks take unseemly leaps at the opening bell. Although few shares will have changed hands in the gaps this creates on charts, it effectively fattens the bank accounts of everyone who held stock before the leap. How do the thieves (aka 'broad-tossers'; see photo above) who control the markets do this trick? First, in order to deplete sellers, they pull their bids in the wee hours of the morning. When there is no news of special interest, stocks will tend to drift lower, especially if there are no significant buyers on the way down. The trend will begin to feed on itself as shareholders grow uneasy. If Wall Street's Wharton-educated crooks have orchestrated the heist properly, a selling crescendo will cause stocks to bottom about 30 to 60 minutes before the start of the regular session. Then, with sellers exhausted and no offers in sight, it is bears who will start to grow anxious. Their increasingly urgent bids to close out short positions will continue to accumulate as the opening approaches. It is then that the Masters of the Universe, mainly specialists licensed to maintain orderly markets, but also to steal from amateurs, will spring the trap, pulling their offers to reset prices to a level that can satisfy pent-up demand. That price will often be well above the previous day’s close. Voila! Instant new $$ billions for the white-collar carnies who operate the world's bourses. Why Stocks Idled The foregoing helps explain why stocks did nothing on Friday. Until a few months ago,
A pullback to the green line (x=6467.33) would trigger an enticing 'mechanical' buy, notwithstanding the bearish drumbeat of a war with no clear ending. Investors demonstrated on Thursday they don't really care about the headlines, so overwhelmingly eager are they to throw money at stocks. Even a big leap in oil prices elicited hardly a shrug. Although NYMEX crude hit $114 barrel at the intraday peak, up 14%, the E-Mini S&Ps ended the session with a short-covering scramble that left the index up five points on the day. I still believe this is just a bear rally, but its near-term potential is to the 6810.00 target shown in the inset, or even to the 7030.75 Hidden Pivot 'D' of a larger pattern I identified in the chat room. The chart shows how a dip next week could make the short-term picture even more bullish. _______ UPDATE (April 8, 8:15 p.m.): Today's deftly orchestrated, rip-'em-a-new-orifice short- squeeze has cleared the way for an almost certain rally to the 7030.75 target identified above. Its close proximity to the all-time high at 7097 would turn nearly everyone super-bullish, particularly bears, presumably setting the hook for The Big One following a run-up to marginal new highs. Isn't that what bear rallies are for?
MSFT's dip on the opening to the green line triggered a 'mechanical' buy with the potential to reach 387.92. Bulls were halfway there on Thursday when the stock closed above the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 372.25. If it can do it again on Monday, that would make further progress to the d target all but certain. I have shown only a portion of the bullish pattern for proprietary reasons, but it is an rABC that meets all my rules. I still expect the stock to fall eventually to 332.67, which implies that this rally should be shorted aggressively at 387.92, albeit with very tight risk control.
June Gold finished the week with a lackluster performance that nonetheless left intact the bullish pattern shown, with a 5144.00 target. The closing price was about midway along the length of a large range that stretched from 4580 to 4825. That seems excessive and could have pleased no one, but it was not especially bearish even though the futures finished the session with a $114 loss. Looking just ahead, a pullback to the green line (X=4382.40) would trigger an appealing 'mechanical' buy, stop 4128.00.
I've used a pattern similar to the one in the latest Gold tout (see above) to project a rally over the near term to at least 86.105. The previous tout implied the futures would already be there, but I don't recall what I was thinking at the time to suggest that the rally would be so steep. It has already triggered a 'mechanical' buy that paid off with a more than $6 leap. However, if the futures should dip to the green line a second time, I'd suggested taking advantage with a bid there and a 61.20 stop-loss. This implies more than $3000 of initial risk per contract, so a small-pattern trigger is strongly recommended to cut that down by as much as 95%.
Two strong rallies last week improved the look of the daily chart, with a 133.49 target that now looks all but certain to be achieved. Thursday's rigged plunge to an intraday low at 116.13 was quickly recouped, as we might have expected in a healthy bull market. It triggered a 'mechanical' buy at the red line, which confirms the bullish outlook for this ETF, a proxy for the shares of gold exploration companies. If GDXJ were to relapse to the green line (x=110.53), be ready with a bid there and a 102.87 stop-loss.
Did you fade the Dow’s 1100-point rally on Tuesday, or the nearly 500-point follow-through the next day like I told you to? I’d written here a few weeks ago that shorting into strength these days offers the best odds bears have gotten in decades. Stocks had spent four months building an obvious top, and finally, there it was, a precipitously weakening market staring us down just as the U.S. joined Israel in a war against Iran. Usually Wall Street loves nightly footage of an enemy's buildings getting blown to smithereens by F-35s. The fighter jets cost $100 million apiece, and maintenance and operational costs can add another $300 million to that. But this war has another cost, and it's not the 'good' kind: a huge leap in the price of crude oil and natural gas. Investors go to sleep every night praying something will happen soon to ease the situation. It has pushed gas prices as high as $6 a gallon in California and is threatening to send already steep increases in the price of everything else out of control. The graph says Wall Street ought not get its hopes too high for quick relief, since crude looks like it could rise to the sky before quotes settle back to a more normal $70 or so someday. But how will Wall Street react if prices reach the $125-a-barrel target in the graph, or maybe even higher? Actually, buyers have shown unmistakable signs of mental illness, but with a seemingly benign twist. Before Tuesday, the broad averages had lurched both ways on a hair trigger, moving inversely with every blip up or down in the price of crude. But on Tuesday they did something so bizarre that no one could have predicted it. With oil up a few dollars, stocks went
