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Rick Ackerman

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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.

Rick's Picks - [My prediction three weeks ago that the bear market had seen its worst seemed crazy at the time — particularly to me, because I’m an inveterate permabear.  However, last week, bulls distanced themselves further from the low of the mini-crash that occurred when tariff  panic was in the air.  I’d said the selling would take […]

Rick's Picks - [Two weeks ago, I made the seemingly outrageous prediction that Trump’s tariff offensive would not cause a recession and that the stock market bear would soon be over.  Shares were in a steep plunge at the time, and investors around the world seemed ready to hit the panic button that Sunday night. The S&Ps had […]

Rick's Picks - [Just ahead of last Monday’s steep plunge, I predicted here that an S&P reversal from 4820 would mark the end of the bear market. So far, SPX has rallied 646 points off an actual low at 4835. Bulls are not yet out of the woods, however, since a relapse could occur at any time. The stock market […]

Rick's Picks - A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find […]

Rick's Picks - Here’s some cold water on the notion that Trump’s radical trade policies could help bring about an economic golden era. I’d written here last week that punitive tariffs might be the only medicine strong enough to jolt the world into doing honest business. Foreign manufacturers would leap to relocate their plants to the U.S. in […]

Rick's Picks - The Trump wild card has made it especially difficult to bet on the stock market. Even cynics can’t say for sure that his radical agenda will not eventually produce an economic golden era capable of pushing the Dow average to 100,000 or higher. In just two short months, the president has crushed wokeness and racial […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Gold Miners finally getting the attention they deserve.

March 16th, 2025 | One Last Melt-Up?

Rick's Picks - Will there be one last melt-up before this doddering bull market seeks penance?  Some of my fellow gurus believe a final show of bravado is coming, especially those who base their predictions on Elliott Wave Theory. I think the party is over, but I’m forced to admit that if too many traders agree with me, […]

Rick's Picks - I’ve written here before about how the broad averages have struggled to go lower during what could turn out to be the initial phase of a bear market. Many traders, particularly greenhorns too young to have never experienced a bear market, appear to be buying each step of the way down. They could do so […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Forget about profits, just try to hold onto what you have.

Rick's Picks - You’ve heard from ‘Formula382’ before. A longtime Rick’ Picks subscriber, he manages wealth in the Ozarks, using puts and calls aggressively, with a dollop of good timing, to keep clients happy. He has also shown uncanny skill at rotating out of sectors just before they peak. In a recent chat room discussion, Formula wondered whether […]

Rick's Picks - I’m tracking Nvidia shares closely because they can tell us whether China’s DeepSeek threatens America’s lead in AI development.  The Nasdaq-listed stock got pummeled a month ago when the Chinese revealed they were developing an open-source chatbot that can easily compete on performance and price with the most advanced models offered by OpenAI and other […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Gold continues its charge higher

Rick's Picks - Trump promised everything but a cure for cancer during last Thursday’s press conference, and there was no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to helping to shape a better world. Can he do it? One thinks of Teddy Roosevelt, who possessed seemingly limitless energy and zeal for taking on big projects, including building a national […]

Rick's Picks - Get the forecast for Microsoft right and you cannot go far wrong guessing where the stock market is headed next. This has been an article of faith at Rick’s Picks for years, and it has served us well. The chart shows MSFT either moving in lock-step with the Dow Industrials, or sometimes leading the Indoos with pullbacks […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Gold is on an unstoppable charge

Rick's Picks - Bloggers were revved up when last week began, trumpeting a warning that China’s DeepSeek R1 threatened to crush America’s capital-intensive effort to lead the world in AI development. ZeroHedge was among the first to jump on the story. “The future of humanity is being decided as we speak,” wrote Mark Whitney. “This is a full-blown, […]

Rick's Picks -     I still expect Bitcoin to notch one or two more record highs on the hourly chart, but they will likely be the dying gasp of the bull market that began in 2009. There is reason to doubt that the broad averages will be swept up in this fetid blast of flatulence. That would […]

January 19th, 2025 | Microsoft

Rick's Picks - Get Microsoft right, as I continue to remind you, and your forecast for the stock market can’t go far wrong. The tech giant is among the most valuable companies in the world, with extraordinary profit margins tied to an 80% market share in operating systems. The subscription-based revenue model the company has put in place […]

Rick's Picks - Although the major indices were down just 1.6% on Friday, it felt like a big day. Everything that matters to the U.S. economy was moving the wrong way: stocks were falling across the board; interest rates and energy prices were climbing; dollars were growing dearer, especially for debtors; and gold, perhaps imagining a bevy of […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Could Tesla stock be the best short play ever?

Rick's Picks - The party is over, or so says the chart above. It is a long-term picture of the E-Mini S&Ps, and it shows the futures rolling down after touching a 6136 target that has been nearly five years in coming. Actually, it has taken nearly 16 years to get there since the longest bull market in […]

Rick's Picks - I’m making no bold predictions for 2025, since getting it right in these way-too-interesting times is like trying to guess when a ticking time bomb will explode. When it does, the shrapnel will pop an economic bubble so pumped with folly, greed and hubris that only a Wall Street shill or a madman could believe […]

December 22nd, 2024 | Larry’s Commentary

Rick's Picks - Wednesday’s brutal response to a mildly hawkish Federal Reserve rate announcement triggered two opposite market signals. First, the sell-off told us that the great secular bull market that began in 2009 is over. Second, the extraordinarily intense selling generated oversold readings that were bound to produce a short-covering rally, as they indeed have. The stock […]

Rick's Picks - I’ll trash bitcoin in a moment — my new hobby — but first a yellow alert for everyone who thinks the stock market’s inevitable collapse is most likely to happen shortly after the first of the year. Although that seems quite plausible, fulfilling popular expectations is not how Mr Market usually works. Think how many […]
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