The Morning Line

Bear Sighting Was Premature

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Like UFOs and Bigfoot, far more bear market sightings are imagined than real. I thought I’d spotted Papa Bear myself when Nvidia announced terrific earnings a couple of weeks ago, only to see their shares reverse and dive sharply after a deceptive spike higher. Was this the needle prick that burst the AI bubble? It certainly seemed so, for it was not merely plausible, but logical, given that Wall Street and the entire investment world were desperately counting on the world’s only $5 trillion company to turn sagging markets around. They got their wish, but it was a delayed reaction that must have spooked many investors. Stocks plunged for several days after the announcement, before catching a bottom and reversing steeply.

Your editor was one of the non-believers who were sure stocks had entered a bear market long overdue. It wasn’t just Nvidia’s performance, either. Trump’s fortunes, if not to say his credibility, seemed to be on a downswing, in part because his nemesis Epstein was creeping back into the headlines. The President was uncharacteristically back on his heels, seemingly in synch with falling stocks. But within a few days, NVDA was basing, Trump was diverting the media toward a possible peace pact between Russia and Ukraine, and stocks were in a steep recovery. It was ferocious enough to seem like a classical bear rally, and that’s what I assumed it was  — until, that is, in just three days, the broad averages were already within easy distance of new record highs. That was on Friday, and there’s no point pretending the rally is a fake, destined to end with a whimper.

Place Your Bets

I continue to believe nevertheless that stocks are in a topping process. However, a bear market is unlikely to begin now, with bullish seasonality revved to the max and the legacy media beating the drums for more Fed easing. In a sane world, investors’ fatal addiction to Fed credit injections would have been rebuked years ago by a severe recession. These are crazy times, though, and ending them may call for a more potent kind of symbolism than NVDA’s price histrionics:  the question of whether Elon Musk will become the world’s first trillionaire, for instance. It’s time to place your bets.

Rick's Picks for Monday
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$ESZ25 – December E-Mini S&P (Last:6859.50)

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$MSFT – Microsoft (Last:492.01)

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When a correction fails to reach its ‘D’ target as could occur here, it implies the dominant trend, a 16-year-old bull market, will continue. MSFT could still relapse to d=431.89, but we’ll give bulls the benefit of the doubt for now with a rally projection to at least 526.24. That’s the ‘d’ target of a pattern on the weekly chart begun on 9/5/25 from 492.37, and it will become an odds-on bet to be achieved when the stock pops though 495.57, a midpoint resistance that comes from the same pattern.

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$GCG25 – February Gold (Last:4254.9)

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This is the first chart I’ve drawn that projects a gold price above $5000/oz. The pattern is probably too obvious to work precisely, but that won’t negate its ability to keep us confidently on the right side of the trend. A theoretical buy signal has already been signaled with the thrusts through the green line (x=4234.40). However, we can’t know how likely the 5126.10 target is to be achieved until we’ve seen buyers interacts with the midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance at 4529.79. For now, we can use it as a minimum upside projection. As always, a decisive move through p, and particularly a close above it, would shorten the odds of a continuation to D.

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$SIF26 – Jan Silver (Last:56.71)

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$GDXJ – Junior Gold Miner ETF (Last:109.34)

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$BTCUSD – Bitcoin (Last:90,903)

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A minor rally target posted in the chat room on Wednesday caught Friday’s spike high within 0.04%, but there’s more rally room to at least 94,155 once Bitcoin completes its pullback. The whipsaw reversal to the downside shaved nearly $3,000 from the peak price in under three hours, underscoring the nasty volatility that occurs in this vehicle between swing highs and lows that have been precisely predictable. For those who trade BTC over the weekend, look for a reversal from 89,980 to leverage.  Be aware, however, that a decisive breach of this midpoint Hidden Pivot support (15m, a= 92,804 on 11/28) could send Bitcoin down to as low as 88,688 in search of traction.

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$TLT – Lehman Bond ETF (Last:88.94)

My hardcore deflationist point of view has saddled me with a bullish bias whenever I ponder a T-bond chart. Although this allowed me to catch the October 2023 bottom just off the low, it also caused me to see the nearly two-year dirge that has occurred since as base-building for a long bull market that has yet to materialize. I don’t doubt that it’s coming, presumably in conjunction with the next recession. But TLT’s chart suggests it could take many months before it rises and, inversely, yields begin to fall. In the meantime, look for it to scuddle sideways, with a moderate bias to the downside that would correspond to merely somewhat higher long-term rates.  Altering our expectations in this way can help diminish the distraction of believing Trump can do something about it — i.e., about rates determined by markets, and about high levels of debt that are crushing America’s middle class. He can’t, and his expansionist, credit-driven economic policies will only exacerbate the bearish trend in bonds. Suppose the small rise in their price over the last two years has completely discounted the global appeal of Trump’s bold leadership and the additional demand this has created for U.S. Treasury paper. In that case, it’s hard to imagine a bullish surge in T-bonds when the President’s inflationary policies produce the opposite of instant economic miracles: stagflation.

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