How to Time Market Tops and Bottoms

On this first full weekend of Summer, we thought we would revisit our June 3, 2019 research post regarding a price pattern we love to trade – the Fibonacci Extension Bounce. This pattern sets up fairly often and the key to understanding this pattern and where these trades present real opportunity is in understanding the price dynamics behind these extensions. There are many instances where a Fibonacci price extension level will fail to promote a price bounce or rebound – and the price will just keep trending higher or lower past the extension level.

You can read our original research post here that clearly shows the bottom and our price targets.

Pay very close attention to the price levels and setups of the charts within that June 3, 2019 post. These setups are based on what we term a “100% Fibonacci Extension” from a previous trend reversal (peak or valley). The concept of this trading pattern is that the initial “impulse” price move sets up the first leg of a move. The retracement price move sets up the entry trigger for the second price leg – the next 100% price leg. The bottom, in this case, of the second 100% price leg sets up the “end of the move” and the potential for a price rotation in the opposite direction (likely resulting in a 38% to 61%+ retracement move).

In both instances of our June 3 calls, Crude Oil and the ES followed through exactly as we predicted.

This first chart of Crude Oil shows how price bottomed near $52 and has recently advanced to levels near $58 after reaching the 100% Fibonacci extension levels. As this move higher extends to levels near the ORANGE moving average line on this chart and/or beyond the $58 to $59 target level we originally drew on our June 3rd charts, we would consider the upside price move “completed” based on our expectations. Yes, these types of trend could extend even further beyond our expectations. But our objective, as skilled traders, is to target and profit from the highest probability objectives – which was the move from $52 to near current price levels.

Follow the MAGENTA lines on these charts to see the Fibonacci Extension Pattern Setup. They are not hard to see on the charts when your eyes are trained to identify them.

This ES Daily chart shows the incredible +230 point rally that took place after our June 3 research post and after the Fibonacci extension pattern completed. It is really hard to miss the opportunity with a move like this. Again, follow the MAGENTA lines on this chart to see the Fibonacci Extension pattern setup.

At this point on the ES chart, the upside price rally has resulted in a 161% (roughly) upside price advance of the previous Fibonacci Extension pattern (last leg). This upside price leg range, 161%, suggests the upside price move should be close to ending soon. There is a possibility that price could advance to levels near 200% of the previous price leg range, but traders would be chasing a 25% further upside advance that may only be a low probability outcome.

Our advice for skilled traders is to pare back existing open long trade positions near these new all-time highs. The price advance appears to have reached levels that suggest the upside advance may be nearing an end point for the US stock markets. After such a big upside price leg, we have to be cautious near these new all-time highs that further price rotation may become a concern.

Oil, on the other hand, could continue to rally because it has only advanced 61% of the last Fibonacci 100% price leg. The global concerns regarding Iran and the US, as well as global economic concerns, could push Oil back up to the $60 to $62 level before reaching a peak.

Over the past 21+ months, we’ve highlighted some of the best tools and techniques we use to find great trading signals. This one technique, the Fibonacci 100% Price Expansion Leg, is just one of the tools we use to find trades and targets for our trade alerts for members.

The more one understands how price works and how the markets operate as a Symphony of price actions, one can find opportunities for great trades almost all the time. Skill and experience make the difference when deciding when to trade and what to trade and that’s what we provide.

More Eye Opening Charts on Currencies and Gold Here

We’ve now shown you two different price setups using Fibonacci price theory and the only thing we have to do is wait for a technical price confirmation before finding our entry trade. We’ll see how this plays out over the next few days and weeks. Remember, we are not proposing these as “major price bottoms”. They are “upside pullback trades” (bounces) at this point. A bullish price pullback in a downtrend.

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Chris Vermeulen

A Crisis vs. THE Crisis: Keep Your Eye on the Ball

By Laurynas Vegys, Research Analyst

Today I want to talk about crises. Two of the most notable ones that have been in the public eye over the course of the past 6-8 months are obviously the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. The two are very different, yet both seemed to cause rallies in the gold market.

I say “seemed” because, while there were days when the headlines from either country sure looked to kick gold up a notch, there were also relevant and alarming reports from Argentina and emerging markets like China during many of the same time periods. Nevertheless, looking at the impressive gains during these periods, one has to wonder if it actually takes a calamity for gold to soar.

If so, can the yellow metal still return to and beat its prior highs, absent a major political crisis or a full blown military conflict? My answer: Who needs a new crisis when we live in an ongoing one every day?

More on this in a moment. Let’s first have a quick look at what happened in Ukraine and Syria as relates to the price of gold. Here’s a quick look at the timeline of some of the major events from the Ukrainian crisis, followed by the same for Syria.

There seems to be a fairly clear pattern in both of these charts. Gold seems to rise in the anticipation of a conflict; once the conflict gets going, or turns out not as bad as feared, however, it sells off.

We see, for example, that as the news broke that chemical weapons were being used in Syria and Obama was threatening to intervene, gold moved up. But when the US did not wade into the bloodshed and Putin proposed his diplomatic solution, gold slid into a protracted sell off, ending up lower than where it began.

It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty how much of gold’s recent rise was due to anticipation of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, but there were certainly days when gold seemed to move sharply in response to news of escalation in the conflict. And again, after it became clear that the U.S. and EU would do little more than condemn Russia’s actions with words, gold retreated. As of this writing, it’s down about $85 from its high a little over a month ago. (We think many investors underestimate the potential impact of tit-for-tat sanctions, but they are not wrong to breathe a sigh of relief that a war of bullets didn’t start between East and West.)

In sum, to the degree that global crisis headlines do impact the price of gold, the effects are short-lived. Unless they lead directly to consequences of long-term significance, these fluctuations may capture the attention of day traders, but are little more than distractions for serious gold investors betting on the fundamentals.

You have to keep your eye on the ball.

The REAL Crisis Brewing

 

Major financial, economic, or political trends—the kind we like to base our speculations upon—don’t normally appear as full-fledged disasters overnight. In fact, quite the opposite; they tend to lurk, linger, and brew in stealth mode until a boiling point is finally reached, and then they erupt into full-blown crises (to the surprise and detriment of the unprepared).

Fortunately, the signs are always there… for those with the courage and independence of mind to take heed.
So what are the signs telling us today—what’s the real ball we need to keep our eyes upon, if not the distracting swarm of potential black swans?

The big-league trend destined for some sort of major cataclysmic endgame that will impact everyone stems from government fiscal policy: profligate spending, leading to debt crisis, leading to currency crisis, leading to a currency regime change. And not in Timbuktu—we’re talking about the coming fall of the US dollar.

The first parts of this progression are already in place. Consider this long-term chart of US debt.

Notice that government debt was practically nonexistent halfway through the 20th century, but has seen a dramatic increase with the expansion of federal government spending.

Consider this astounding fact: The government has accumulated more debt during the Obama administration than it did from the time George Washington took office to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. Total US government debt at the end of 2013 exceeded $16 trillion.

Let’s put that in perspective, since today’s dollars don’t buy what a nickel did a hundred years ago.

Except for the period of World War II and its immediate aftermath, never before has the US government been this deep in debt. Having recently surpassed the threshold of 100% debt to GDP, America has crossed into uncharted territory, getting in line with the likes of…....

• Japan, “leading” the world with a 242% debt-to-GDP ratio
• Greece: 174%
• Italy: 133%
• Portugal: 125%
• Ireland: 117%

The projection in the chart above is based on the 9.4% average annual rate of debt-to-GDP growth since the US embarked on its current course in response to the crash of 2008. If the rate persists, the US will be deeper in debt relative to its GDP than Ireland next year, deeper than Portugal in 2016, Italy in 2017, Greece in 2019, and even Japan in 2023 (and the US does not have the advantage of decades of trade surpluses Japan had).

Granted, the politicians and bureaucrats say they will slow this runaway train, but we’re not talking about Fed tapering here. Congress will have to embrace the pain of living within its means. We’ll believe that when we see it.

But let’s take a more conservative, 10 year average growth rate (an arbitrary standard many analysts use): 5.3%. At this rate, the US will still be deeper in debt than Ireland and Portugal in 2017, Italy in 2019, Greece in 2024, and Japan in 2030.

Either way, this is still THE crisis of our times; all of the countries mentioned above are undergoing excruciating economic and social pain. It’s no stretch to imagine the kind of social and political turmoil that has resulted from the European debt crisis coming to Main Street USA, as American debt goes off the charts.

It’s also important to understand that the debt charted above excludes state and local debt, as well as the unfunded liabilities of social entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

This ever-growing mountain—volcano—of government debt is a long-term, systemic, and extremely-difficult-to-alter trend. Unlike the crises in Ukraine and Syria (at least, so far), it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future. While some investors have grown accustomed to this government created phenomenon and no longer regard it as dangerous as outright military conflict, make no mistake—in the mid to long term, it’s just as dangerous to your wealth and standard of living.

Still think it can’t happen here? To fully understand how stealthily a crisis can sneak up on you, watch Casey Research’s eye opening documentary, Meltdown America.

The article A Crisis vs. THE Crisis: Keep Your Eye on the Ball was originally published at Casey Research

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