Overnight on Friday big news hit the wires as the U.S. launched a successful military attack on Venezuela, resulting in the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife who were then whisked away to New York to face trial on drug trafficking and other charges. This may impact markets on Sunday evening when futures open for trading as well as on Monday morning when the first full trading week of the New Year begins.ASML Holdings (ASML) led semiconductors higher on Friday with a big-volume buyable gap-up using the intraday low at 1133.48 as a selling guide. We reported on that as well as bottom-fishing pocket pivots (BFPPs) in CoreWeave (CRWV), Intel (INTC), Iren Ltd. (IREN) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS). CRWV failed to hold its early pocket pivot, however, as volume levels fell into the close.
We also reported on pocket pivots in a number of uranium names, including the Direxion Daily Uranium Bull 2X (URAA), on Friday but one had to enter these trades early in the day as they all closed quite extended to the upside. Uranium Energy Corp. (UEC) also failed to trade enough volume for a pocket pivot by the end of the day. Constructive pullbacks from Friday's closing levels would provide potentially lower-risk entries but for now these remain well-extended to the upside such that entries at these levels carry additional risk if they fail.
Friday's action was quite peculiar in that while a number of beaten-down FOMO areas of the market were rallying and semiconductors including ASML Holdings (ASML), Micron Technology (MU) and SanDisk (SNDK) were mostly rallying, big-stock NASDAQ names faltered badly.Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) posted very wide outside reversals as they reversed sharply at 10-dma, 20-dema, and 50-dma support. Meta Platforms (META) triggered short entries at its 10-dma, 20-dema and 50-dma today while Microsoft (MSFT) rolled below 10-dma support before slashing through and closing below its 200-dma. Tesla (TSLA), which had triggered short-sale entries at the 20-dema earlier in the week triggered another one Friday as it busted 50-dma support on news of weak sales.
After posting a new all-time high above the $83 level, silver pulled back after the CME intervened in an attempt to quash the rally by raising margin requirements and lowering position limits twice in one week. These rule changes were imposed on gold, silver, platinum and palladium leading to pullbacks in all four metals this past week. Silver held the $70 level, however, as Spot Silver ended the week at $71.13. For near the $70 level has served as near-term support as the white metal closed above the prior week's lows.
Gold rallied with silver last week, resulting in a low-volume breakout in the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). After the CME changed its rules gold pulled back with the rest of the precious metals but for now remains well above 10-week moving average support which serves as near-term support.
As gold and silver pause and attempt to consolidate recent sharp gains, Bitcoin ($BTCUSD) is attempting to get up off its back by posting a bottom-fishing pocket pivot (BFPP) at the 50-dma last Wednesday. Technically this becomes actionable using the 50-dma as a tight selling guide.
The Market Direction Model (MDM) remains on a BUY signal.