Stick It!

Trading in NYMEX Crude won’t start for another hour, so I’ve had to imagine a pattern to predict how things might turn out. It is a foregone conclusion that quotes will open significantly lower, since Trump, as fully expected, has announced on a Sunday yet another ceasefire. This dog-and-pony show continues to impress because of what I call the “next idiot” theory (which I’ve explained many times in the chat room). It holds that if there is breaking news which a trader working at 305 Wacker Drive believes will cause his colleagues at 307 Wacker Drive to sell crude contracts, then he, too, is obliged to sell or face an avalanche. This is irrespective of whether anyone actually believes that Trump’s weekly, ginned-up announcement about “talks” will cause peace to break out in the region or even ease the tense situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Allowing for the ‘next-idiot’ effect to determine this afternoon’s opening price, I’ve imagined an initial bar that has Sep Crude trading down to around $81, about $5 or $6 lower than Friday’s settlement price. I doubt the selling will be much worse than that, implying the bullish pattern projecting to as high as 91.70 still holds. That is what I expect to happen once it becomes clear by mid-week or so that Trump’s cessation of air strikes against Iran has, as we might have expected, achieved nothing.

Although DaBoyz could easily short-squeeze this gas-bag to new record highs with just a dollop of fake good news, I’ve presented a chart that is somewhat bearish. The 7266.00 target lies just 3.5% below, and even though the tedious struggle between bulls and bears has yet to achieve it after six weeks, there is no reason to presume it will not be reached eventually. Bottom-fish when the futures get there, but be sure to use a ‘camo’ trigger, since my merely mentioning the target in print is likely to queer its magic and attract some clowns and Goldman algos. For the record, I have been won over by a strategy used successfully by chat-roomer ‘Nick the Greek’ that’s pretty simple: short this hoax every time it pokes its greasy little snout above the water line. Nick’s stops are wider than I would recommend, but his tactics seem to be working. I have yet to adjust to the shift to a bear market myself and am still bottom-fishing stocks like TSLA out of habit when they are falling like cinder blocks.  On Nick’s inspiration, though, I hope to come around, and soon.

I gave GDXJ the benefit of the doubt when last week ended, but all it did was add to the disappointment we’ve felt waiting and waiting…and waiting for gold to show a pulse. I set a low bar, and GDXJ didn’t have to do much to turn the intraday charts short-term bullish. Alas, two falsely-signaled rallies sevened out, and so I’ve switched to a bearish pattern that projects more downside to 86.60.  I’ve aired another that implies even lower depths will be plumbed, down to 82.46 over the next 6-8 days. For now, though, let’s take the bad news one target at a time. A 105.95 print would bull things up a bit, but let’s not get excited until it happens.

We’ve been using 4.82% as a minimum upside projection, but it’s time to shift the target to the 5.09% Hidden Pivot shown in the chart (see inset). The erratic ascent of long-term rates has been making headlines lately, but Rick’s Picks subscribers have been expecting them to hit 5% for nearly a year. The crazed bull market has acted as though it doesn’t care, but it soon will—or rather, must—demonstrating its concern with a stunning decline. Nothing spells big trouble for the U.S. economy like 7% mortgage rates that coincide with the highest home prices in history. The Ten-Year Note hasn’t been at 5% since the Great Financial Crash of 2008-09. Although the crash itself caused rates to recede quickly to 4%, we may not be so “lucky” this time. If you haven’t done so already, time is growing short to secure your assets—and your household—against a catastrophic  event that will rebuke financial excesses that have been piling up over decades.

I’ve set a high bar at 4403.70 to signal the possible end of a bear market that began in January, when the August contract hit a record 5700.  Otherwise, we should expect the weakness to continue at least until the 3793.40 target shown in the inset is achieved. There are two more Hidden Pivot supports you should be aware of, since either is capable of reversing the trend at least temporarily:  3822.70, the target of a smaller pattern that was featured here last week; and 3603.40, a worst-case projection derived from sliding ‘A’ up to the 5513.00 ‘marquee’ high recorded on March 2. Of the three possibilities, I favor 3793.40, which is why I have boldfaced it. The other two will work for careful bottom-fishing, however. _______ UPDATE (Aug 2, 3:08 p.m.): Gold spent the entire week trading inside the previous week’s range, so there is no change in my forecast.