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December 13, 2021 | Two Biggies May Be About to Peak

Rick Ackerman

Rick Ackerman is the editor of Rick’s Picks, an online service geared to traders of stocks, options, index futures and commodities. His detailed trading strategies have appeared since the early 1990s in Black Box Forecasts, a newsletter he founded that originally was geared to professional option traders. Barron’s once labeled him an “intrepid trader” in a headline that alluded to his key role in solving a notorious pill-tampering case. He received a $200,000 reward when a conviction resulted, and the story was retold on TV’s FBI: The Untold Story. His professional background includes 12 years as a market maker in the pits of the Pacific Coast Exchange, three as an investigator with renowned San Francisco private eye Hal Lipset, seven as a reporter and newspaper editor, three as a columnist for the Sunday San Francisco Examiner, and two decades as a contributor to publications ranging from Barron’s to The Antiquarian Bookman to Fleet Street Letter and Utne Reader.

The charts of AAPL and the S&P 500 are synced to imply that a potential bull market top lies not far above.  Both would require a rally of 4.5% from current prices to achieve ‘Hidden Pivot’ rally targets of major degree,  This means there’s a good chance the respective tops would be important ones and therefore shortable. Given the clarity of the patterns used to calculate the targets, it seems unlikely that either will exceeded by much if at all.

Apple’s chart is the more telling, since the stock last week impaled a key resistance at 166.72, ending the week $13 above it.  For its part, the March E-Mini S&P contract closed just a hair above a comparable resistance. The 0.1% overshoot would not be sufficient by itself for us to infer that the futures are about to break out. However, in the context of AAPL’s overwhelming uptrend, it can be safely assumed that the E-Minis’ stall will be resolved to the upside.

Pre-Dawn Shenanigans

Apple is not merely an institutional favorite, it is crucially important to the the grand illusion that a global financial system headed inexorably toward collapse will continue to muddle along. The Players will do anything to sustain this illusion, but it takes a lot of money to heft a stock approaching a $3 trillion valuation.  That trickery has helped is becoming increasingly apparent.  For one, Apple’s biggest rallies in recent months have occurred in the dead of night, on thin volume and gossamer supply. For two, morning openings have been manipulated in pre-dawn trading to exhaust sellers so that short-squeeze rallies exceed previous peaks effortlessly. Taken together, these tactics and a couple of others sleights have kept AAPL in a relentless waft since April. If you have trouble imagining what could possibly throw this perpetual motion machine into reverse, see last week’s commentary, ‘Concerning That Hoard of Cash on the Sidelines’. To summarize: The hoard is entirely a creature of money velocity and will cease to exist as soon as a serious downturn in stocks spooks investors.  Start preparing for this by jotting down the two targets shown in the charts:  187.93 for AAPL and 4909.75 for the March E-Mini S&Ps.  When the respective vehicles get there and then start to roll down hard, it may become more difficult for traders to find a bomb shelter with an open hatch.

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December 13th, 2021

Posted In: Rick's Picks

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