The pattern shown is not of the bluest pedigree because of its obviousness. However, it is almost certain to be useful if you plan to trade the big swings or merely want to know with confidence how oil prices are likely to behave in the weeks and months ahead. The chart is a composite, so don't expect the levels to perform exactly. However, even so-so patterns have midpoint Hidden Pivots that 'work', so we should take last week's stall precisely at p as a sign of this particular pattern's reliability. We don't know yet whether the futures are about to blow past p=116.89, but if they do, take it as a sign they are not merely capable of reaching a record 178.89, but that this is likely. Also, although a relapse to the green line (x=85.89) would likely produce a global sigh of relief, from our perspective it would set up a juicy 'mechanical' buy, stop 54.88, that implies yet another big price leap capable of incapacitating the global economy. Bloomberg has quoted the usual Wall Street shills as saying crude prices would have to hit a minimum $128 and stay there for a while to bring on a recession, but these guys are such liars and morons that nothing they say can be trusted. The same could be said of 90% of the news and commentary emanating from Bloomberg, which is the most Trump-deranged of all the major news outlets. They really hate the guy, and everything they report on him has an extremely negative slant, even to the point of their hoping Iran wins the war. _______ UPDATE (Mar 23, 2:06 p.m.): I hadn't expected crude's psychotic swings to touch the green line (85.89) so soon, but they did, triggering a 'mechanical' buy there that could have produced
A conventional pattern dating back to February's record highs near 5600 implies the April contract will continue falling to at least 4378.70 before it can find good traction. This seems more likely at present than a reversal off Friday's low, which narrowly spared a big, bullish pattern that traces back to January and yields a 5732 target. I am featuring a bullish rABC pattern nonetheless so that you will be able to see it develop in real time if gold's correction is already over. My gut feeling is that the geopolitical world is sufficiently treacherous to support a bull market in bullion for the foreseeable future, even with the dollar and interest rates rising. If correct, this implies the vicious shakeout in bullion is already egregiously overdone. I'll leave you with the most bullish interpretation possible at the moment, a continuous weekly chart that shows April Gold to have triggered a promising mechanical 'buy' signal last week at the green line (x=4821). It is predicated on a D target at 6084.90 and requires a 4399 stop-loss. _______ UPDATE (9:19 p.m.): This afternoon's opening rip stopped out all short-term bulls. Voodoo 4273.40 looks like the next potentially tradeable bottom on a relapse, but that doesn't mean you, Nick. _______ UPDATE (March 25, 6:45 p.m.): Bulls will be on their way to 5110.90 if they can impale the 4605.50 midpoint resistance that neatly contained their progress today. Use the 60-minute chart and a=4423.20 on February 2 to draw the target pattern and tradeable levels. A pullback to 4352.70 would trigger a salacious 'mechanical' buy, stop 4,099.00.
GDXJ has lost a third of its value in just three weeks, exacting a brutal toll on mining-share investors that will test their faith to the utmost. It would take a rally of at least 7.65 points from any low to trigger a buy signal on the hourly chart (a= 126.88 on 2/17). Using the 102.88 low from Friday would imply a print at 110.53 is necessary to jump-start bulls. Thereupon, GDXJ would be presumed bound for at least p=118.19, or to 133.49 under the most bullish circumstances. This is similar to the best-case scenario I've detailed in my touts for Comex Gold and Silver, but it is hardly a good bet.
Although Trump has achieved many spectacular successes in his second term, he has made two big promises he can't possibly keep. The first was to bring back affordability to the broad middle class. Anyone who believes this must be living on some planet with an all-powerful ruler who generously provides everyone with low-cost homes, apartments, childcare, senior care, pet care, car repairs, college tuition, groceries and insurance. Trump's second promise is that he will wind down the Iran war quickly. This ranks right up there with George W. Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech in 2003, when major combat operations in Iraq turned out to have been far from over. Few took him seriously at the time, just as few believe Trump is close to bringing the mullahs to their knees. Far from surrendering, they reportedly have been pondering whether to attack Israel’s Dimona reactor, a key facility in the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The town of Dimona was hit by a powerful missile over the weekend, but if Iran targets the reactor, that could conceivably release radioactive material into the atmosphere, threatening not only to kill all human life in the region, but throughout the world. If Israeli were to retaliate proportionately, the destruction this could cause lies beyond imagining. The Annihilation Trade I usually try to focus on investable issues in these weekly commentaries, but they are less-than-trivial in comparison to a nuclear threat that could annihilate mankind. No one doubts that Iran’s leaders are fanatics who are capable of doing anything to avoid defeat. This threat is not going to go away, nor are oil prices going to retreat any time soon. With interest rates rising, a pumped-up stock market and feverish global economy are facing a perfect storm. If you are looking for a trade, there is probably
Wall Street evidently sees the war as little more than an annoyance, something to be gotten over as quickly as possible so that the monkeys who are paid to throw Other People's Money at stocks can get back to business as usual. Their main impediment at the moment is Trump-deranged media coverage that is rooting so hard against Trump that they are practically cheering on Iran. Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Washington Post et al. could almost make you believe that Iran, without a Navy, can mine the Strait of Hormuz under the watchful eye of the most sophisticated minesweeper fleet on the planet. In the meantime, the news media's relentless barrage of discouragements has made it extremely difficult for the chimps and prop desk whizzes to trigger off the kind of short-squeeze leaps that could push the broad averages to new record highs in mere days. And so they continue to bide their time, waiting for cheerier headlines. Although the Dow, Nasdaq and the S&Ps have shown little life this year, neither have they shown much weakness. In any event, investors are certain to remain obsessed with oil prices until quotes recede from the $100 threshold, and until the talking heads concede that the current price dislocations are not likely to be permanent. In the meantime, this is no bear market, just a perpetual-motion money machine waiting to lurch wildly back into gear. Oh, right, a price target: The futures look southbound most immediately for 6452.75, and a rally to the green line (x=6752.19) would trigger a 'mechanical' short, stop 6852.25. It is recommended only to subscribers who know how to cut the $5000 risk per contract to $250 or less, and it is most definitely NOT recommended to Nick. Here's a link to my latest rant
I've restored MSFT to the list because it could prove to be analytically useful. No bear market is possible as long as this stock is at least holding its own. It triggered a plain-jane 'mechanical' buy when it fell to the green line last month (x=407.04) after having failed to achieve a bull-market target at D=593.79 by a country mile. The implication is that you are likely to make money buying the stock here with a stop-loss just beneath the point C low at 345.79. I cannot guarantee that the implied rally will reach D, but it is a better bet to deliver a one-level move to p than to slip beneath C first.
April Gold will trigger a mechanical buy when (not if) it falls to the green line (x=4838.60). The trade is predicated on a 6084.80 target that looks like a 75% shot to be reached. I proffer this information not to get you salivating, but rather to clarify the picture at a time when price action has been lackluster and forecasts are all over the lot. The trade rates an '8.1', which means my confidence is quite high. Since the initial risk would be $41,490 per contract, I am recommending the trade only to subscribers who are quite proficient with 'camo' entry triggers, no exceptions.
I don't like this bullish pattern as much as the one I've featured in the Gold tout, but it is certainly good enough for government work. It suggests that May Silver will become a fetching 'mechanical' buy when it touches the green line (x=77.043). Keep in mind that x is not a support, a target or a Hidden Pivot, just a place where we organize certain types of trades. The implication is that the futures could keep falling all the way down to c=63.667 before they turn around. At that point, the position would be showing a loss of slightly less tha $67,000 per contract. Obviously, the trade is only for those who can handles the risk and who know how to set up small-pattern triggers to get aboard. Because of the look of the pattern, the trade rates a '7.8', which, although very appealing, is significantly lower than my rating for the gold trade.
The short-term bearish picture for this symbol is congruent with my outlook for Comex gold and silver. Since trading is all about avoiding bumping heads with a thousand clowns, we should wait until GDXJ stops them out with an inevitable dip beneath the twin lows from early February pennies beneath 121. On the daily chart, the trigger interval for getting long thereafter would be 3.65 points, but we can probably cut that by 90% by pulling a trigger pattern from the lesser intraday charts.
My regular commentary will resume next week when I my return from a busman's holiday on the West Coast. In its place is an excerpt from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain that holds an epiphany for the way we experience and recall the passage of time. It has been published here before, but this version was masterfully shortened and simplified by ChatGPT so that more readers could understand and appreciate it. The original can be found in the chapter “Excursus on the Sense of Time” in several translations. RA There is something peculiar about deliberately settling into a new place—making the effort to adjust, to feel at home—only to leave again once that adjustment is complete. We insert such intervals into our lives as a kind of restorative break. They are meant to refresh us when the steady sameness of daily routine has begun to dull and weaken us. But this dulling is not simple physical or mental fatigue; if it were, rest alone would cure it. The real issue is psychological: when life becomes too uniform, our sense of time fades. And because our awareness of time is bound up with our awareness of being alive, when one weakens, so does the other. We commonly think that interesting experiences make time pass quickly, while monotony makes it drag. That is only partly true. Monotony does make hours feel long and tedious. Yet over longer stretches it has the opposite effect: it compresses time. Large, uniform periods shrink in memory until they seem to vanish. By contrast, rich and varied days may fly by in the moment, but they give weight and substance to life as a whole, so that years filled with variety seem fuller and longer than empty ones that slip away unnoticed.
