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ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION

October 22, 2023 | The Smell of Napalm in the Morning

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.

It took nearly two weeks for bears to recoup their mojo after getting sucker-punched by a suspiciously buoyant market following the October 7 Israel massacre. Although the attack could lead to a nuclear conflagration and world war, Wall Street kept its cool while trade desk sleazeballs deftly distributed shares to the rubes. But Friday’s are often clarifying, since they force traders to guess how America’s mood might change or intensify over the weekend. That would explain why stocks fell hard to finish the week. But this followed nearly two weeks of perverse strength, presumably because there is virtually nothing for anyone to be bullish about at the moment. Geopolitical news grew still grimmer last week, even as shares hovered until Wednesday as though they were gathering strength for yet another psychotic upthrust.

A ‘Theoretical’ Buy

We should never discount this possibility, as the chart reminds us. What it says, in coldly disinterested technical terms, is that the Dow Industrials became a theoretically enticing buy when, with dubious prescience, they bottomed on the green line just hours before the Hamas attack. Under the simple rules of the Hidden Pivot System, this triggered a ‘mechanical’ signal to get long . This doesn’t’t mean we should expect the Indoos to rocket to new all-time highs any time soon; rather, it portends a rally at least to the red line (34,455) before such time as the DJIA falls beneath the pattern’s point ‘C’ low at 31,428. This set-up usually works, so don’t be surprised if a preternaturally powerful rally develops amidst growing darkness in the real world.

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October 22nd, 2023

Posted In: Rick's Picks

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