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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 - The dog days of summer have returned with a vengeance to Florida this year, especially in my home. The air conditioner’s condenser coil sprang a leak, which is hardly unusual considering that it’s eight years old. What is unusual, and causing more than a little inconvenience, is that the broken part will take a month […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Will AI make you more productive or just take your job?

Rick's Picks - The dog days of summer have returned with a vengeance to Florida this year, especially in my home. The air conditioner’s condenser coil sprang a leak, which is hardly unusual considering that it’s eight years old. What is unusual, and causing more than a little inconvenience, is that the broken part will take a month […]

Rick's Picks - Of all the markets tracked by Rick’s Picks, the dollar arguably has been the most interesting. This might seem paradoxical, given the relatively placid look of the Dollar Index chart above. Although there has been moderate turbulence since early last year, the overall impression is of a transoceanic flight cruising within a vertical range of several […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Should tariffs replace income taxes? Special Free Trial Offer!

Rick's Picks - The disconnect between tight Fed policy and a U.S. economy on the brink of recession is growing more unsettling every day. A key question is which economy we are talking about, since there are two distinctly different ones that Fed actions can affect. The first is the economy of consumer goods and services. It is […]

Rick's Picks - Last week’s rabid short-squeeze punctured bull-market targets I’ve been drum-rolling for months in Microsoft, Apple and QQQ. Moreover, the bullish look of the S&P 500 chart shown above is so clear and compelling that even the most stubborn permabears will need to make room for more upside to at least 6118, a nearly 13% rally […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - AI reliability questionable

June 9th, 2024 | Soft Landing Fantasies

Rick's Picks - Those who think the wizards at the Fed have engineered a soft landing for the grotesquely pumped U.S. economy are in for a rude awakening. Strip out the “wealth effect” from mega-cap stocks driven mostly by hot air and short covering, and the economy is already in recessionary muck. Although yacht sales reportedly are still […]

Rick's Picks - Speaking of my fellow gurus, our switchboards have lit up to warn that something big is looming.  Even the oddballs who think stocks are headed much higher seem to agree that a punitive correction is long overdue. And although each of us would like to believe that the arrival time of whatever dreadnought is coming […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Which stock is the bell-weather for the markets?

Rick's Picks - The white-collar thieves who manipulate bullion appear to be losing their grip. Silver bulls have long wondered how prices could languish even when demand for physical appeared to overwhelm dealer supplies. Blame paper proxies for precious metals, since many if not most investors would rather store and swap the stuff in virtual form than pay […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Why isn’t the price of crude much higher?

Rick's Picks - Although there is no publicly traded company called Pirate’s Treasure, the impressive price history displayed in the chart above is real enough. The Canadian company holds royalties to five gold mines that could conceivably rank among the largest in the world someday, according to ‘Spartacus’, a Rick’s Picks regular known for his street savvy, his encyclopedic knowledge […]

Rick's Picks - Some of you may remember Gary Liebowitz, a troll that I 86’d from the site years ago. He still harangues me now and then, and I am saddened to report that his rage has only worsened, especially where Trump is concerned. Here’s a pungent note from Gary that just plopped into my email box. I […]

Rick's Picks - The chart above shows RCA’s spectacular climb to the Mother of All Tops in 1929. The larger chart that frames it shows what Nvidia shares would have to do to replicate the peaks and troughs that set up RCA’s plunge into hell. Notice that the stock’s final top (#4) was just marginally higher than one […]

Rick's Picks - The portfolio managers who rig the markets appear to be losing their touch. Usually, they are able to short-squeeze stocks in the ‘lunatic sector’ — our label for the egregiously mis-named ‘Magnificent Seven’ — when earnings are announced after the close.  This quasi-criminal manipulation can add hundreds of billions of dollars to the world’s ‘wealth […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - The manipulation of precious metal prices losing its grip

April 14th, 2024 | Springtime for Bonds?

Rick's Picks -   The devastating bear market in Treasury paper since 2020 may be nearing an end. I was pessimistic about this myself when TLT, an exchange-traded fund, that tracks the long bond, broke down last week. But a bigger picture saw this as occurring in the context of a market that may have bottomed last October. […]

Rick's Picks - [Many readers of these weekly commentaries may not be aware that the focus of Rick’s Picks each day is on timely trading ideas. Below is chat room banter for a typical ‘freaky Friday’. The discussion includes several trades that were posted ahead of actionable opportunities in a few stocks, including McDonald’s, Tesla and Amazon. All the links […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - US Economy great for billionaires, not so much for everyone else

March 31st, 2024 | Why We Fail to Fix Things

Rick's Picks - [My colleague Charles Hugh Smith is a true outside-the-box thinker who tackles big questions with intellectual rigor and bold imagination. In the commentary below, he explains why neither our political system nor technological wizardry have been able to solve problems that threaten to topple the global economy and destroy our quality of life.  You can support excellence […]

Rick's Picks -   The Fed’s main job supposedly is to manage our expectations, but have Powell & Co. painted themselves into a corner? At the moment, it would appear that investors have no clue what to expect. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, except that their default mode has been to push stocks with multitrillion dollar […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Is the party for Gold and Silver expected to continue?

March 17th, 2024 | Something’s Got to Give

Rick's Picks - For nearly a year, I’ve promoted the idea that the post-covid bull rampage would end when Microsoft shares hit $430. They effectively achieved that benchmark on Friday with a pre-dawn print at 428.95 that gave way to a $16 plunge. If this was not THE top, it certainly felt like A top, and a potentially […]
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