The 42.09 rally target we've been using looks no less likely to be achieved, notwithstanding last week's punitive selloff from the pink line (p2=39.18). That won't make the prospect of a 'mechanical' buy any less intimidating, however. The first opportunity, which I am not recommending, would be to buy at the red line with a 34.34 stop-loss. It was touched and slightly exceeded on Friday, but we'll wait for a less risky opportunity at x=33.37. Even then, we'll need to create a 'camouflage' trigger to avoid exposing ourselves to nearly $3 of entry risk per share.
If this so-far modest bounce is going to get legs, it should easily penetrate the 71.74 midpoint resistance of the reverse pattern shown by no later than Tuesday. A decisive move past it would make the futures an odds-on bet to achieve D=74.40. As always, an easy move through so clear and compelling a Hidden Pivot would imply that the uptrend is likely to continue. However, the rally will need to get past the pattern's 79.67 peak to suggest that a test of autumn's highs near 88 is coming. _______ UPDATE (Dec 13, 10:18 p.m.): Is this rally the start of an important trend change? If so, it will push past the 71.10 'D' target of this reverse pattern without much effort. Today's thrust was sufficient to trigger a theoretical buy and some profit taking later in the session, but it will take more than that to reverse hard selling that has persisted for the last ten weeks.
[This essay originally appeared here in July 2022 and was written by a friend who spends a lot of time thinking outside the box. His provocative thesis is that that there is a physiological basis for our political differences; moreover, he notes, liberals cancel and ghost their conservative friends for reasons that are tied to their deepest fears about survival as a species. How else to explain why they become so outraged over seemingly little things that they would end a long friendship over them? It happened to me most recently when a Boulder woman I'd known for years visited Florida. We took some long walks on the beach, had a few great dinner conversations and generally enjoyed each other's company. After she returned to Colorado, I asked her in an email whether her news sources, including CNN and MSNBC, ever showed videos of Biden stumbling through a speech or falling off a podium. She insisted that such videos had been doctored by the Republicans; then, a few days later, this otherwise courtly woman admonished me in an email with some informational links to"Read this, you fucking moron!" So much for the strong mutual respect that had always obtained between us over the years. Yet another close friendship had bitten the dust. Please circulate this to anyone who might find it interesting, especially liberal friends who have stopped taking your calls . At the author’s request, I have not identified him. RA ] *** Many of us have noticed that our liberal friends are more likely to 'ghost' us than the other way around. Typically, they terminate our friendships in ways that are meant to be final. Their way of doing so ranges from slipping away to kissing us off with a righteous display of indignation and disgust. Here is
The S&Ps will be trading above 5000 if MSFT rallies the 15% needed to achieve the 430 target I've ballyhooed in this week's commentary. Even so, I doubt the E-Minis are about to blow through the 'discomfort zone' just above, since it is fraught with prior peaks and voodoo numbers. Accordingly, I've sketched a bearish reverse pattern that would trigger a short if the futures were to fall 75 points from any high. That's an unacceptably large trigger interval, but you can cut it down to size by setting up a 'camouflage' trade on a chart of lesser degree, such as the 15-minute.
My short-term-bearish outlook is more evolved in AAPL than in the E-Mini S&Ps, since the stock already triggered the prospective short noted in the tout for the latter. The trade would have finished the week $2.48 in the red, but I am not advising getting into it belatedly in any event -- at a better price, as it were. It would take but a 1.6% rally to achieve new record-highs, and there is no compelling technical rationale for betting against this. The next attractive buying opportunity based on the chart would come at p=184.60, a midpoint support that we can bottom-fish with an rABC pattern on the 15- or 5-minute chart.
With each new upthrust, TLT continues to pass our tests -- most recently by creating of a fresh impulse leg on the daily chart. This occurred when the rally exceeded a look-to-the-left 'external' peak at 91.61 recorded on September 22. The move topped 11 cents shy of the 93.17 'D' target shown in the chart, so that obstacle remains to be tested this week. Assuming it is exceeded, the next daunting impediment would be the 96.54 peak recorded on August 31. It is important enough that any move above it should be regarded as a sign that a potential bull market is emerging from its infancy.
Buyers impaled the 2073.00 target of the reverse pattern shown, implying the futures are on their way to at least 2152.60, the D target of a lesser pattern whose A & C coordinates are shown in the chart. Given the way bulls consolidated above the smaller pattern's midpoint pivot, the probability is high that D will be achieved with little ado. Since the futures by then will have broken free of gravity at $2,000, we should expect a relatively quick move from 2152 to 2,200, the first round number resistance above the soon-to-be-obliterated one at $2,100. _______ UPDATE (Dec 8, 11:47 a.m.): I'll bet our old friend Andy Maguire had a thing or two to say about Monday's psychopathic, whoopee cushion reversal in gold. He has noted that the pond scum who cause these takedowns have a risk cushion of as much as $90 in the arb against unlimited paper gold. Although they are obviously still able to squash gold down to $2000 practically at will, DaScumballs are going to find in increasingly difficult to fool investors into thinking gold deserves to be significantly lower than that. For now, the February contract is headed down to the 2001.50 target shown in this chart -- a good place to attempt tightly stopped bottom-fishing. Any lower would indicate 1986.90, an even better bet for bottom-fishing if it is achieved.
March Silver has moved into a thicket of prior peaks, but there should be little doubt it will surpass them and head unhesitatingly toward the 27.16 target shown. The December contract we'd been tracking has stalled at p2, but the equivalent obstacle here has been exceeded on a closing basis, attesting to the power of the move. The big pattern has yielded up just one 'mechanical' buy so far, but the rally has steepened since, suggesting that a swoon to the red line, never mind the green one, to set up a 'mechanical' buy is unlikely. In practice, this means we'll need to find a reverse pattern on a chart of small degree to get long enroute to 27.16.
The 42.09 target shown has been with us for a while but only came into focus on Friday with the clean move through, and close above, p2=39.18, the 'secondary pivot'. Since GDXJ shredded p=36.28 as well barely a week ago, the implied finishing stroke to D would seem almost as certain as that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. The rally has been unkind to doubters and will not become any less so as it traverses the white void just above. Prompt me in the chat room if you've got an idea of your own that you'd like vetted, but it will take diligent attention to the lesser charts in any case to get aboard belatedly.
Crude teases prior highs and lows so relentlessly as to seem hellbent on tormenting everyone who trades it. I doubt the bear cycle begun from around 88 on October 20 will reach the 66.30 'D' target shown, but p2=69.56 certainly seems possible, given the small breach of p=72.93 two weeks ago. In any case, the next buying opportunity would likely come on a marginal breach of lows just to the left of Friday's close. The trigger interval would be $1.39, so check with me in the chat room for risk-limiting ideas before you take the plunge.
