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You’ve heard from ‘Formula382’ before. A longtime Rick’ Picks subscriber, he manages wealth in the Ozarks, using puts and calls aggressively, with a dollop of good timing, to keep clients happy. He has also shown uncanny skill at rotating out of sectors just before they peak. In a recent chat room discussion, Formula wondered whether the recent sharp break in the price of Walmart shares might be a harbinger of trouble – and not just minor trouble, either. He is concerned that when the bull market ends, possibly as soon as spring, it will usher in an economic depression worse than the 1930s. I not only share his pessimism, but also believe that a bust of such magnitude is unavoidable. Here’s the discussion thread from the Trading Room, lightly edited: Formula382: We’ve all been wondering which stock would lead the market higher now that MSFT has fallen out of bed. Is price action in Walmart perhaps the canary in the coal mine? Is the stock not the largest indicator of overall consumer health? WMT’s dive following the recent earnings report was pretty severe — and fascinating. The company’s CFO expects suppliers to “take price” — i.e., suck up costs associated with inflation and/or tariffs. It turns out WMT doesn’t even factor in the effects of potential tariffs on revenue and earnings. Sounds bonkers to me. The company’s shares have been trading at a 40 multiple, and Costco’s at a nose-bleed 60! These names historically have traded with multiples in and around the mid- to high-teens, much like the S&P. In short, WMT is commanding the multiple of many tech names with just 4-6% same-store sales growth. And not in a hundred Sundays do I believe that the upper crust of the U.S. is now shopping at Walmart. I live in

TLT has broken out with a stab on Friday that not only penetrated a major midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 92.04, it also closed above it. If the uptrend continues for another day or two, it will affirm the likelihood of more upward progress toward p2=95.62, the 'secondary pivot'.  I was skeptical about the strength of the trend earlier because discrete thrusts were not exceeding 'external' peaks on the daily chart. But the uptrend's resilience has been affirmed by a corresponding move lower last week (see my TNX 'tout' below)  in 10-year yields beneath a crucial support at 4.24%. ______ UPDATE (Mar 7):  The breakout was short-lived, but because it generated a true impulse leg by exceeding two prior peaks, one of them internal, the other external, bulls deserve the benefit of the doubt. If another strong leg is coming, this retracement should find traction at either 89.47, a few ticks beneath last week's low, or at  88.08, my worst-case, smackdown low.  Here's a chart to orient you. 

GDXJ's chart is in good shape -- good enough, actually, to hint that the upcoming test of support in gold and silver futures will favor bulls.  The likelihood of this will increase if this vehicle hits the green line just as its Comex-contract cousins are touching their respective 'D' correction targets.  Regardless, if GDXJ falls to x=45.12, shown in that inset chart as a green line, that would signal a 'mechanical'  buy, stop 41.84. Presumably, it would be good for an easy ride back up to at least p = 48.39.

You’ve heard from ‘Formula382’ before. A longtime Rick’ Picks subscriber, he manages wealth in the Ozarks, using puts and calls aggressively, with a dollop of good timing, to keep clients happy. He has also shown uncanny skill at rotating out of sectors just before they peak. In a recent chat room discussion, Formula wondered whether the recent sharp break in the price of Walmart shares might be a harbinger of trouble – and not just minor trouble, either. He is concerned that when the bull market ends, possibly as soon as spring, it will usher in an economic depression worse than the 1930s. I not only share his pessimism, but also believe that a bust of such magnitude is unavoidable. Here’s the discussion thread from the Trading Room, lightly edited: Formula 432: We’ve all been wondering which stock would lead the market higher now that MSFT has fallen out of bed. Is price action in Walmart perhaps the canary in the coal mine? Is the stock not the largest indicator of overall consumer health? WMT’s dive following the recent earnings report was pretty severe — and fascinating. The company’s CFO expects suppliers to “take price” — i.e., suck up costs associated with inflation and/or tariffs. It turns out WMT doesn’t even factor in the effects of potential tariffs on revenue and earnings. Sounds bonkers to me. The company’s shares have been trading at a 40 multiple, and Costco’s at a nose-bleed 60! These names historically have traded with multiples in and around the mid- to high-teens, much like the S&P. In short, WMT is commanding the multiple of many tech names with just 4-6% same-store sales growth. And not in a hundred Sundays do I believe that the upper crust of the U.S. is now shopping at Walmart. I live

Bitcoin’s success as a pure speculative vehicle benefits more from tight supplies than any other factor. Its deep-pocketed sponsors don’t bolt for the exits whenever the going gets tough, even if they rely on crazy young people (‘verrückte verdammte junge leute’, colloquially) to provide the manic buying power that alone can rocket Bitcoin to stupid heights. Today’s decisive breakdown (see inset chart) implies DaBoyz have decided to let the value of their precious virtual hoard plunge into white space that is unlikely to evince much support until $65,000 or so is reached (see chart inset). That would amount to a 25% haircut, or 40% from the record $108k achieved in December. This is a bold gamble but necessary if the Masters of the Universe are to avoid having to suck up untold Satoshi tonnage dumped by the hoi-polloi in a global bear market. Has the bear arrived? It's certainly possible, and we will, therefore, continue to check Bitcoin's pulse regularly to get an accurate ‘read’ on a speculative mania that has pushed shares steeply higher since 2009. Stay tuned!

Time for a tone change. This is a tough call, since I've been a hard-core deflationist since the mid-1970s after reading a persuasive book by the late C.V. Myers, and later another, The Great Reckoning, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Myers' thesis was that the endgame for the epic credit blowout of the last 40 years would feature a dollar so strong that all who owed them would be crushed by imploding debt. The implied tsunami of bankruptcies would be even more devastating than the 1930s experience, wiping a dozen zeroes from the global balance sheet. The resulting shortage of dollars would become the catalyst for a Second Great Depression from which it would take a generation or longer to emerge. I still believe this is how things must end. But not now. Trump, who is verging on political omnipotence, clearly favors a weak dollar, and this will hold the coming bust at bay for a while. But the chart suggests the dollar is tough enough to stand up to such moderate debasement as Trump's patriotism and nationalistic pride can abide. I have adjusted my outlook for the dollar accordingly: Look for weakness down to the range 95-100; then, an explosive rally that will end inflation for 60 years. _______ UPDATE (March 14): The Dollar Index has come down hard to the 102.99 'd' support of this pattern.  It is sufficiently clear and compelling that we 'should' see a tradable bounce. If there is none, that would darken my outlook significantly. _______ UPDATE (Mar 21): DXY has bounced 2% from within 20 cents of the 102.99 'hidden' support furnished above. The rally would be more persuasive, however,  if it exceeds several 'external' peaks ranging from 104.32 to 104.67 recorded in the first week of March. Here's the chart. 

Ten-Year yields have been pounding on a 'hidden' support at 4.430% for more than two weeks, presumably getting ready for a drop to exactly 4.242%. A tradable rally from that Hidden Pivot support looks like an 80% bet, but if it eventually gives way, look for a further fall to 3.959% or even 3.675%.  By all means, jot these numbers down if you care about where long-term interest rates are headed, since charts can predict them far more accurately than the dartboard guesses you'll get from Bloomberg's talking heads, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the punditry, Fox Business News, MSNBC et al.

I'm tracking Nvidia shares closely because they can tell us whether China's DeepSeek threatens America's lead in AI development.  The Nasdaq-listed stock got pummeled a month ago when the Chinese revealed they were developing an open-source chatbot that can easily compete on performance and price with the most advanced models offered by OpenAI and other U.S. developers, including Elon Musk. Investors who have bet trillions of dollars on relatively costly solutions were so spooked by the news that they batted NVDA down to $113 not long after it had traded as high as $153. At the time, I said the stock would be an opportune short sale if it bounced from $113 to $140. It did so last week, hitting a recovery high of $143, but I'm no longer so enthusiastic about betting against the stock. It is the chart that has changed my mind, not the aggressive attack on DeepSeek by investors, analysts, pundits and scientists.    They said China had spent considerably more developing the technology than they were acknowledging and that its smarts were extracted from Nivida chips the Chinese had purchased despite a U.S. embargo prohibiting them from getting their thieving hands on certain high-tech hardware. Eating America's Lunch So, who's lying? I doubt we'll get a straight answer from the news media since they are rarely up to the challenge of reporting on developments that seem to upset the status quo. The question remains crucially important nonetheless, since there are literally trillions of dollars of bets and side-bets on the relatively capital-intensive, proprietary approach that American-based companies have taken toward AI development. NVDA's stock chart is probably as good an answer as we'll get, since a graph cannot lie. In that regard, a move to new all-time highs above $153 would imply that America's edge

Ten-Year yields have been pounding on a 'hidden' support at 4.430% for more than two weeks, presumably getting ready for a drop to exactly 4.242%. A tradable rally from that Hidden Pivot support looks like an 80% bet, but if it eventually gives way, look for a further fall to 3.959% or even 3.675%.  By all means, jot these numbers down if you care about where long-term interest rates are headed, since charts can predict them far more accurately than the dartboard guesses you'll get from Bloomberg's talking heads, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the punditry, Fox Business News, MSNBC et al. ______ UPDATE (Mar 1): Rates have slipped beneath my initial target at 4.242%, closing last week at 4.231% off a 4.214% low. This implies that the downtrend is taking hold and could accelerate to fulfill the second target at 3.959%. It has also made achieving that target more likely.  ______ UPDATE (Mar 7, 6:31 p.m.): Yields on the 10-Year Note took a strong bounce last week, but it wasn't sufficient to power through the gap created by Feb 25's downdraft. This will add to the downward weight of the chart, but I'd like to see a two-day close beneath the red line before I infer that more slippage to 3.959 has begun.