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A recent graduate of the Hidden Pivot course, Paul Hoffman, has developed a regimen of exercises that he has found useful in honing his trading skills.  Here it is: I think it would be useful to the newbie and also to more experienced traders to design a series of exercises to get used to the Hidden Pivot Method.  Some of them you have already suggested and I am sure there are better ones than mine.  For most traders, and I include myself, the problem is not finding entry spots, but rather, trade management and follow-through with judicious, pre-planned stops and exit points.   Here are some of the training exercises I've been using:  Day 1:  Go thru all the charts, determining what opportunities, if any, each has to offer. This can be done by putting them in a directory, setting the display as images, and then using Windows to display them one at a time as a slide show.  Day 2:  Review the charts again looking for "big picture" ABCs  Day 3:  Review at least two weekly tutorials in the recorded archive  Day 4:  Using a tick chart or other low-level time frame:      -- Determine the current impulse and C-D legs.      -- Hypothetically initiate several trades at 'X'      -- Determine a stop-loss      -- Practice "time" stops, counting down 15 seconds from entry before re-setting the stop to avoid even a nominal loss      -- Allow yourself to be stopped out or to exit at 'P'  When I did this on a five-minute chart I netted $10 profit after commissions. The basic stop was a three ticks on the E-Mini  Day 5:  Repeat Day 3, but use only second signaled point 'x' entry prices after 'C' has been stopped out  Day 6 :   Repeat, except that instead of exiting at 'P', use a trailing stop from point 'P' and above  Day 7:   Repeat, using a dynamic trailing stop as

William Greider, writing in The Nation, sees a global economy on the brink of a potentially catastrophic trade war. "We have reached the endpoint of globalization as we have known it," writes Greider.  "It cannot continue as before, because the United States is essentially tapped out. Goliath has fallen and cannot get up. Who will lend a hand? Not China, obviously, but also not Japan and the Asian Tigers, or the European nations." Because Greider has tailored his article for a far-left publication, it glosses over the fact that America's standard of living would have to take a huge hit before we could even hope to compete with Asian manufacturers. Union wages in the manufacturing sector in particular would have to fall by perhaps half, with commensurate cuts in health care and pension benefits.  Of course, much higher levels of capital investment could make us competitive over time. However, drastic changes in this area are inconceivable, since Americans are 50 years removed from knowing how to save and invest. Had we done so with the zeal of Asians, we'd have state-of-the-art factories today that could overcome Asia's wage advantage while leveraging the much lower shipping costs associated with serving a domestic market. Click here for the complete article.

(We're always delighted to hear from our globe-trotting friend, Auerbach & Grayson's Jonathan Auerbach, who visits the most exotic places on earth in search of lucrative investment opportunities. From the sounds of it, Zimbabwe has come a long way since his last visit.  RA) Today I shall not challenge you with numbers or intense points of view and just relate a few anecdotes of travelling on the 'Frontier' over the past couple of days. Dinner in Harare on Tuesday night at Victoria 22... just over 2 years ago I regaled you and sent an attachment of the bill for dinner at this palace of gustatory delights; it was Z$ 1.7 billion which I paid with a stack of bills 6 inches high. This time the bill for 7 of us including the post-prandial cigars and exotic quaffs was $470 with tips and no problem sending a bill. In the new world when many more of you will travel to Zim, plan ahead and book a table here; it was packed. Yesterday morning we left Bulawayo by car at 0600 for the 500 KM trip North to Victoria Falls and the Zambian border. Our lovely Garmin guide on GPS once we left town announced 'continue straight for 480 KM'...so much for getting lost in Africa. Diesel, however, proved to be a problem en route as every station we stopped at for the first several hundred KM had nasty signs which read...'no petrol, no diesel'. Well,just as our further progress looked problematic we found a station with diesel, but the attendant said he couldn't pump since electric power was out in their area. Your intrepid brokers solved this with a small donation and we suddenly heard the sweet sounds of a generator firing up and providing satisfaction for our thirsty vehicle. So on to

In this short audio segment from The Korelin Report radio show, Rick discusses the election results and the potential effects of the recently announced $600 billion quantitative easing. Click here to listen.

Our friend Vronsky, founder of www.Gold-Eagle.com has used the "Rule of 7" to project some very interesting bull-market targets for five widely followed investment vehicles, including gold, silver, crude, the U.S. Dollar and the Gold Bugs Index (HUI). Some of the projections will astound you, such as crude oil at $415 per barrel; but for gold, his most immediate price objective is $1532; and thence $1957, followed by $2907. Click here to access his complete set of forecasts, including calculations.

From our friend Jonathan Auerbach:  Please click on the thumbnail panel to imbibe some remarkable emerging market rate expectations by our friend Mike Churchill of Churchill Research. Mike's thesis is that the rate hikes in China Tuesday were destined to happen, hardly an anomaly in a 'strong' global economy, and he expects many more such hikes across the emerging world over the next year. These increases should result in highly divergent historical spreads between US Fed Funds and all other global rates, save the ECB and Japan, and continue to provoke increasing liquidity to flow into EM fixed income in search of higher returns and similarly into EM equity markets. Thematic implications (unintended consequences?) we should all consider are that EM Central Banks may indeed respond with capital controls as Brazil did recently; if indeed the hikes are a sign of economic strength at what point is the US dragged along; and how will gold and its equilibria to all commodities react given the knee-jerk performance Tuesday.

Auerbach & Grayson's latest report amplifies the theme of today's commentary, admonishing us to remain bearish on the dollar even though every contrarian bone in our bodies may be telling us to do otherwise.  Click here  for the full report.

A 40% rally in the Dow by year's end? This seemingly farfetched scenario is laid out in an article at Kitco that uses an overlay of the Nikkei Index to make its case.  Take a look and see what you think. Here's the link: http://www.kitco.com/ind/Wilson/sep012009.html I received the link myself from a longtime subscriber and replied --skeptically --as follows:   "It's always fun to speculate, Phil, but truth to tell, I haven’t seen a chart-overlay fantasy play out in all the years chart-watchers have been sending them to me. Not even once. "I have particular trouble buying this set-up, however, because, for starters, I am bearish on the USD. Also, Japan's economy was in far better shape in 1998, even mired in deflation, than the U.S economy is today.  They also had something to counteract deflation that we do not: an insatiable U.S. consumer who made Japan's export-heavy economy hum.  Still, I guess anything's possible, and if Fibonacci numbers are destiny, then the envisioned rally certainly could happen as depicted, with extreme monetary easing substituting for whatever factors pushed the Nikkei into a last-gasp, Wave IV rally."

Florida's Rep. Grayson has put out a fascinating, eight-minute YouTube concerning the burgeoning fraud in mortgage foreclosures. It is big business, since these shady operators can make $8000 for each home foreclosed upon. They are forging documents and moving against homeowners for reasons that are flimsy at best and non-existent at worst.  At the heart of the fraud is the fact that, throughout the U.S., documentation of title is shoddy.  Here's the link: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2192946