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Having come to the E-Mini S&P chart 20 minutes too late to leverage the day’s best opportunity, we looked elsewhere. Crude? A decisive thumbs-down, for this is a trading vehicle that is out to tax the diligent trader’s patience to the limit. We found a high-potential opportunity in the shares of Goldman Sachs, however, and made plans to buy put options if the stock rallies a further 4% to its target at 192.91. We were also rewarded by a close look at the weekly T-Bond chart, where an unexciting bull market appears to be conserving energy for the long-haul. A slow, steady bull would be congruent with a dollar forecast that calls for weakness over the long term but not a collapse.

We lingered on the charts of Goldman Sachs, finding several good reasons to be long right now. With a little more work, we were able to come up with several ways to buy the stock without risking much. We then segued to the E-Mini S&Ps, where we identified a rally target worth shorting with a tight stop-loss. We also discussed why bears should not try to intercept this rally aggressively, since it shows no technical signs of slowing down. Finally, we took a look at Comex December Gold, discovering that the intraday high missed by just two ticks a target that had been a week in coming.

tocks were climbing steadily higher, and although a bullish target we were using for the E-Mini S&Ps implied that a strong rally was imminent, we decided it would be premature to look for a camouflaged entry opportunity. That’s because timid action on the lesser charts hinted of tedium for at least a few more hours. Even so, we found a way to play the move, if and when it occurs, by using call options in the Diamonds. Specifically, we considered calendar-spreading an out-of-the-money strike. The discussion of this strategy was a digression of sorts but well worth your attention, since we have seldom discussed the leveraging of options in such detail during the weekly class.

Gold was screaming, the E-Minis were on the move, and although "camouflage" opportunities in each had come and gone, we examined their respective intraday charts closely to see whether there might have been an easy way in. We found that bullion's takeoff had been too abrupt to board, and in the E-Mini, although there had been several ways to get long, the larger patterns promised little follow-through. We ended the session on an interesting note, however, buying a 9.89 downside target in UNG that had been drum-rolled and many days in coming.

It was an excruciatingly dull day on Wall Street, but we still managed to find things to do, even if it required hunkering down on the tick chart of the E-Mini S&P. We took a good look at gold, but as a trade rather than as an obsession or a hobby; and we looked even more closely at UNG, the natural gas ETF, to determine whether its bear market was truly bottomless. Even if that is the case, there are likely to be two terrific opportunities to bottom-fish on the way down.

In the camouflage category, this session ranks as a classic of the genre, since we were right on top of Google when it gave us a very nearly riskless opportunity to get long on the one-minute chart. We were on board from the moment of takeoff and never had to look back. What made the trade so delectable was that the stock looked heavy until the moment it tripped our entry signal. The set-up we used also demonstrated that if a trader is patient, he or she will eventually find an opportunity to initiate a trade more or less risklessly that can make the week.

Stocks were suffering their first setback in a while today, and gold was down too. Even so, the latter looked like a good bet to forge higher in the weeks ahead and to achieve a minimum $1016, a Hidden Pivot target that we were able to identify on the daily chart. Regarding the broad averages, even a cursory look at the E-Mini S&Ps’ hourly chart revealed potentially serious damage. Although the forecast remains bullish, we found reasons to monitor the ES hourly chart closely, since price action at the C-D midpoint of this correction could be revealing.

On an asphyxiatingly dull day -- the fourth in a row -- we stumbled upon evidence that all of this brain-numbing tedium could be the set-up for a nasty plunge. This was the conclusion we drew after looking at the E-Mini-Dow, which recently peaked within 14 points of a Hidden Pivot target that had been more than three months in coming. To leverage this possibility, we considered some option strategies that involved initiating calendar spreads with far-out-of-the-money put options. Liquidity is a concern, so we looked at various alternatives. We also looked at some Comex gold charts and found reasons to be patient.

We spent considerable time during this session splitting hairs -- attempting, for one, to make a belated entry in Apple after the stock opened higher on a large gap. Although the "camouflaged" impulse leg we used to get long ultimately did not work and produced a small loss, we were able to discern some possible reasons for this. (Was the impulse leg perhaps too subtle?) The Hidden Pivot Method provides a very powerful tool for understanding the psychology of the markets, and we used it during this session it to tell us why Apple was bound to be a tough trade; and why Gold over the near term was probably going nowhere.