ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
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.
November 12th, 2023 | Revved-Up Microsoft Is the Engine that Could
Rick's Picks - U.S. shares continued to climb a wall of well-justified worry last week, propelled with sufficient vigor to suggest new all-time highs are likely. Notice how Microsoft’s push into record territory on Friday occurred after the stock had spent nearly six months consolidating at the red line. This is a ‘midpoint Hidden Pivot’, according to our […]
November 5th, 2023 | Markets, Riots, War and Peace
Rick's Picks - [A change of tone and tempo this week from our good friend Richard Charles, owner of Lake Tahoe-based Alpine Capital. His observations concerning gold’s historical role during periods of intense global strife should remind us that bullion’s sometimes crazy price swings should not be investors’ focus right now. RA ] With plans to attend memorial service for a dear […]
October 29th, 2023 | Our #1 Bellwether Defies October Curse
Rick's Picks - Although my technical forecasts have generally been accurate, occasional guesses about when the sky would fall have consistently underimagined the height of bullish folly. Since yet another October looks likely to pass without a stock-market crash, perhaps it’s a good time to look at the chart of Apple, an institutional proxy that is incapable of […]
October 27th, 2023 | Junior Gold Miners May Start to Shine Again
HoweStreet.com Radio - Did the US economy really grow 4.9% in Q 3?
October 22nd, 2023 | The Smell of Napalm in the Morning
Rick's Picks - 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 […]
October 15th, 2023 | Be Among the First to Panic
Rick's Picks - Finally, a rally in gold that looks capable of leaving the $2000 barrier in the dust! This one is being pushed not only by the threat of escalated conflict in the Middle East, but by the dawning realization that a strong dollar and rising interest rates are about to trigger a crisis for the world’s […]
October 12th, 2023 | Middle East War, US Dollar, Interest Rates, Oil
HoweStreet.com Radio - US Real Estate, Natural Gas, Shipping Costs
October 8th, 2023 | This War Is Not a Tradeable Event
Rick's Picks - The massive terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel over the weekend will unsettle the geopolitical world for the foreseeable future. The economic implications are potentially too grave to be treated merely as a tradeable event; investors should instead be thinking about safeguarding capital. Will the price of crude spike to $117 or higher, as predicted […]
October 1st, 2023 | ‘October Surprise’ Drumbeat Quickens
Rick's Picks - Price action last week in the charts of three bellwethers suggests that this year’s ‘October surprise’ could arrive right on schedule and that it could be a doozy. The first shows the dollar’s so-far shallow correction off a minor Hidden Pivot rally target. This portends yet more strength, threatening to turn Powell’s tightening regime into […]
September 28th, 2023 | OPEC’s Production Cuts Unsustainable
HoweStreet.com Radio - Uranium gaining because wind and solar power are flops
September 24th, 2023 | One Last Turn of the Screw, then REAL Pain
Rick's Picks - The bullish gap on the chart holds ominous implications for the global economy, since it removes almost all doubt that interest rates on U.S. Treasury Bonds are headed significantly higher. The rally looks nearly certain to reach 4.81%, the target of the pattern shown. The red line through which the gap occurred last Thursday is a […]
September 17th, 2023 | A Stroll Down Disinflation Lane
Rick's Picks - [Last week’s commentary on the gathering economic storm elicited a light-hearted reminiscence from our friend Richard Charles of Alpine Capital. You’ll find his recollection of some notable deflationists enlightening, and there’s also a new word — screwflation — he has coined to describe a phenomenon that has yet to gain traction with eggheads at some of […]
September 10th, 2023 | Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ McMansions?
Rick's Picks - Can the Wall Street Journal‘s headline writers save America’s juiced-up economy from going bust? They are certainly trying. Check out their lede in Friday’s editions: The Fall in Home Prices May Already Be Over. Fancy that! With mortgage rates headed toward 8%, many readers must have done a double-take when they read this seeming howler. Your editor […]
September 4th, 2023 | Some Scary Shit
Rick's Picks - I let it all hang out in the interview I did Friday with USAWatchdog‘s Greg Hunter. Do I actually believe the U.S. economy is headed into a condition of barter? Yes, I do. It will be that bad. And global. Americans in particular will face a long period of severe hardship when these boom times end. […]
August 31st, 2023 | Stock Markets Ripe for an October “Surprise”
HoweStreet.com Radio - Your next insurance bill may be quite a shock
August 27th, 2023 | ‘AI’ Just Another Wall Street Scam
Rick's Picks - A handful of tech moguls already control the global flow of information, but their influence over our lives will only expand and deepen if Congress doesn’t do something soon to pry their greedy hands from the ultimate fruits of AI development. I say this while recognizing the irony of casting our elected representatives as the […]
August 20th, 2023 | Thoughts on Rent, the Fed, and Bonds
Rick's Picks - [The following was sent out to clients in late July by my friend Doug Behnfield, a wealth manager and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Boulder, CO. Long-time followers of Rick’s Picks will be familiar with Doug’s work, since his thoughts have appeared here many times. I have always considered him not only one of […]
August 17th, 2023 | Could a 27% Drop Happen to Some Stock Markets?
HoweStreet.com Radio - Why crude remains a solid investment
August 13th, 2023 | T-Bond Plunge Ahead?
Rick's Picks - Is Mr. Market about to deliver the coup de grace to bond bulls? It certainly appears that way. They’ve been getting schmeissed regularly since a frightening few days back in March 2020. At the time, investors were struggling to decide how covid would affect their financial lives. The wild gyrations near the top, followed by the subsequent collapse of […]
August 6th, 2023 | AAPL Takes the Lead…Lower
Rick's Picks - Last week’s commentary said the first big correction of 2023 had a ways to go, and that is still the case. If there were any doubts about this, Apple’s swan dive Thursday on punk Q2 earnings released after the close should have dispelled them. The most valuable stock in the world fell by nearly 5%, […]
July 30th, 2023 | First Big Correction of 2023 Has a Ways to Go
Rick's Picks - My ‘Chipotle indicator’ suggests that CMG, along with other high-fliers and the broad averages, could fall by at least 27% from recent highs before the bull market resumes later this summer. We last visited the burrito vendor’s chart in early May, just after a short-squeeze powered by feverish buying speared the red line, a ‘midpoint […]
July 23rd, 2023 | A Few Trillion Here, a Few Trillion There…
Rick's Picks - Last week’s commentary predicted that rates on the Ten-Year Note, currently around 3.8%, will hit a minimum 5.5% before inflation lurches into reverse and the U.S. begins a hellish descent into a full-blown debt deflation. The following, insightful response came from our friend Richard Charles at Alpine Capital: Well done, Rick, for highlighting the crux of markets […]
July 20th, 2023 | Inflation Just Pausing?
HoweStreet.com Radio - When the stock markets might top
July 16th, 2023 | 5.5% Rate on T-Bonds Coming, but Then What?
Rick's Picks - Jim Grant, the financial word’s adult in the room, says the bear market in Treasury bonds could last for decades. Do the long-term charts bear him out? The one reproduced above suggests that it’s at least possible that we are in the early stages of such a move. Most immediately, the chart projects a further […]
July 9th, 2023 | Few Big Winners in the Hard Times Ahead
Rick's Picks - Will the rich and powerful own everything when the global financial system collapses from too much debt? Supposedly, “they” have been plotting and preparing for this all along — even getting a new money system ready to make the takeover complete. But this theory makes no more sense than the one that puts the same evil geniuses […]