I've drawn a hypothetical rally to the 78.39 target as a straight line. Although the sharp move through p=71.50 makes the target very likely to be achieved, we should be prepared for countertrend swings that we can buy 'mechanically' to get a profitable piece of the trend. (Of course, fading minor trends within bigger ones will always be possible.) The uptrend is strong enough that we could expect to profit with a 'red-line mechanical' bid at p, stop 69.20. A stop-loss that wide won't be necessary, however, since we have better tools at our disposal to cut textbook risk by as much as 95%. Let me note in passing that, for years, we've seen crude turn higher without fail each time pump prices fell to $3. Could there be better evidence that the biggest commodity market in the world is as crooked and sleazy as a three-card monte game on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk?
If you can keep a cool head while everyone around you is panicking, perhaps you don't understand the situation. That's what they say, anyway. It is exactly what we saw last week when stocks barely shrugged even as the shooting war in the Middle East took another baby step toward nuclear conflagration. The oil markets certainly recognized the danger, spiking sharply after our titular president warned that Israeli warplanes might soon start targeting Iran's refineries. Energy quotes scored their biggest weekly gain in years while stocks, although relatively subdued, appeared to consolidate for yet another psychotic upthrust. What seemed to matter most on Wall Street was not the threat of cities going up in flames, but a few meaningless, cooked job stats implying that droplets of juice from America's financial bacchanal have begun to trickle into the parched gullets of gig workers, nurses and cocktail waitresses (if not yet retail clerks). Longshoremen could join them shortly with a 62% raise to $69 an hour, including the union's legendary no-shows. It's a little late in the Kondratief cycle for them to become rentiers, but the prospect of owning a few shares of Nvidia seems realistic enough. Although keeping up with the Joneses has gotten easier because the Joneses' inflation-adjusted net worth has been stagnant for 50 years, chasing inflation has only grown harder. And that's measured against phony data that understate inflation by half. Take heart, all you working stiffs: beating inflation is going to be a cakewalk when the next recession brings it down to, like, minus five percent. What About Microsoft? Speaking of recession, this IBM chart, even to the unschooled eye, suggests the Beamer may be about to reverse in a big way. Although I have never tracked the company's shares closely, there may be a few old-timers
Gold's ballistic ascent over the last three weeks has left doubters choking on dust. It has also practically clinched a further run-up to our longstanding target at 2803.40, a Hidden Pivot equivalent to one at 2771 that we used for the October contract. Although it's useful to have a 'guarantee' that a rally target will be reached, a drawback is that the uptrend has been too strong to give us the one-level pullback we require to craft low-risk 'mechanical' entries. They are possible nonetheless on charts of lesser degree, but the opportunities tend to arise during the day or before dawn in NYC. For that reason, you should stay close to the chat room if you trade this vehicle or want to augment a long-term position. If you're wondering how sliding 'A' down to October 6's 1933.00 low would change the outlook, here's a Hidden Pivot rally target to hitch your wagon to: 2940.10.
The pattern shown makes the 5868.50 target look like it can't miss. But it will, if not by much. It is too obvious a picture to yield a precise top and a sharp pullback from D that causes permabears to dance in the streets. Everyone is aware of this ABCD, even the math majors, and the mere anticipation of its final gasp is all but certain to queer D's voodoo stopping-power. But the pattern's Newtonian heft is also compelling -- so much so that the futures are unlikely to get past D without a struggle if at all. One thing that is all but certain is that D is going to be reached before the Fat Lady can sing. The way buyers fisted p=5518.75 the first time they encountered this midpoint Hidden Pivot tells us that. Whatever happens, we'll be looking to short a topping process rather than a top. Stay close to the chat room and keep your email 'Notifications' turned on if you don't fancy being outsmarted by this creaky ship of fools.
MSFT has gone flaccid -- deservedly so, given September's steep run-up. I haven't given up on the 449.52 bull market target featured here for the last six weeks, but I am currently favoring a more ambitious one at 464.76 that provides extra room for a bull that has seemed all but unstoppable since 2009. Both are derived from the reverse pattern shown, and each should evince sufficient stopping power to be shortable. We are unlikely to be gifted with a pullback to the green line for a 'mechanical' entry. However, a somewhat less appealing opportunity would materialize on a correction down to p=425.17. A bid there would require a stop-loss at 411.97.
TLT's tortuous ascent still looks bound for 105.49, a Hidden Pivot target derived from a bull cycle that dates back to October 2023, when this proxy for the long bond was trading around 82. A corresponding fall in long-term rates would bring them down to 3.64%. The trajectory of both charts suggests the targets could be reached by late this year or early in 2025. It is logical to infer that a recession would be well under way with rates at those levels since the Fed could not conceivably force them down by purchasing massive amounts of Treasury debt. Foreigners could do the job for them if there is a global flight to safety for reasons beyond imagining,
This week's charts take a step back to show a big picture, and an even bigger one. There is most immediately a 37.249 target that traces back to the bull cycle begun in March 2020. That's when covid madness struck and mutated unexpectedly into bullish hysteria on Wall Street. The provenance of that target is shown in the thumbnail inset. An even bigger picture that began with 8.40 silver in 2008 suggests that the bull market will top out at 53.060. Here's a chart that shows this. You can see that bulls are stalled at the 32.35 midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance. Conquering this barrier will require two consecutive monthly closes above it or a decisive thrust to at least 35. A surge of mania could accomplish this within the next couple of months, but my gut feeling is that it will take significantly longer than that to consolidate silver for a push above 50. There can be no guarantees, however, since all price action since May has occurred off a top that failed to exceed any prior peaks. That means the larger bull phase that tacked on $2.82 since September 2022 is not impulsive. Even so, the power of the A-B leg, which took silver from 8.40 to 49.82 in three-and-a-half years, should suffice to overcome the relative timidity of the C-D leg. We should continue to trade this vehicle with an aggressively bullish bias while remaining alert to the possibility of nasty swoons of as much as $7 that institutional carry traders use to keep their short positions from blowing up and forcing delivery.
I've hauled out a long-term chart commensurate with the ones displayed alongside this week's gold and silver touts. It shows GDXJ to be slightly ahead of the futures in a precious-metals bull market that has years to run. A close look at the rightmost bar reveals that it has slightly pierced the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance of a pattern projecting to 72.73, a 45% move from here. With one more day to go in September, there's a good chance the monthly close will be above p. A second close above the pivot in October would shorten the odds that 72.73 will be achieved, but so would an upthrust to 54 or higher. That target is not the highest possible using the monthly chart; a reverse-pattern objective of 111.59 is arguable, using a= 84.72 from 2/26/10.
Bertie's push slightly past the 65,597 target shown is a bullish breakout likely to hit 72,639 if this vehicle can push past an additional, minor 'hidden' resistance at 66,820. A bigger picture projects as high as 84,634, a Hidden Pivot target that supersedes the one at 80,546 given here last week. One more 'hidden' resistance deserves a chart alert: 75,816, a 'secondary' Hidden Pivot tied to the one at 84,634. As always, an easy move through any of the four numbers I've highlighted in green would imply BRTI is likely to reach the next. This symbol is not tradable, by the way; it is a real-time composite of the best bids and offers across many bitcoin markets. Tight spreads make this a precise and very usable proxy for bitcoin itself.
The Dollar Index is breaking down following a six-week struggle to hold above 100. Support came more precisely at the 100.57 Hidden Pivot midpoint of the pattern shown, a nearly two-year downtrend that portends more downside to as low as 93.78. Since the dollar was barely able to hold the support with Powell unwilling to ease, it is logical for it to be weakening now that he has decided to go with the global flow. He can't possibly win the devaluation Olympiad, nor would he attempt it. But he has doubtless calculated that the dollar will not get kicked too savagely as long as so many other countries are trashing their currencies.
