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.
February 16th, 2023 | Gold, Silver, US Dollar, Lithium, Inflation, Interest Rates
HoweStreet.com Radio - Could US pension debt lead to hyperinflation?
February 12th, 2023 | Is the U.S. in a Recession or Not?
Rick's Picks - Only on Wall Street is fake news celebrated with such shameless hubris as we’ve seen lately. In the last few weeks, flouting a torrent of lousy corporate earnings reports, investors have gorged themselves on stocks. This resurgence, doomed by recession and a grim outlook for earnings, was supported mainly by fake, or at least […]
February 5th, 2023 | Consumer Stimulus the Easy Way
Rick's Picks - Treat the stock market as you would a sleazy carnival game and you hold the key to accurately predicting its behavior. Take AAPL, for instance. We should have known that permabears were being set up for a fleecing when an always-complicit news media worked slavishly to stoke anticipation of horrendous Q4 earnings. Apple certainly didn’t […]
February 1st, 2023 | US in Recession, Gold, Inflation, Deflation
HoweStreet.com Radio - Could Bitcoin eventually collapse to just $5.00? Special 14 Day Free Trial Subscription!
January 22nd, 2023 | Thin News Begets Thick Craziness
Rick's Picks - The chart is meant to put Friday’s giddy short-squeeze in perspective. If you are a bull and feeling a little discouraged by what you see, that is what I had intended. What better time to rack bears than in the final hours of a week that was more comic relief than hard news? Biden’s docugate […]
January 19th, 2023 | Gold, Platinum and Palladium, Job Cuts
HoweStreet.com Radio - Self driving cars, Crude Oil, Natural Gas
January 15th, 2023 | Congress Outperformed S&P 500 in 2022
Rick's Picks - The headline explains why the voracious bounders on Capitol Hill are willing to spend so much time, money and effort getting re-elected. For they are not just investment insiders, they are recidivist sponsors of legislation that directly benefits their stock portfolios. It is quite a racket, and whatever laws exist to prevent them from getting […]
January 8th, 2023 | What to Expect as Inflation Cools
Rick's Picks - [The following went out in mid-December to clients of Doug Behnfield, a Boulder-based wealth manager and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley. The letter provides an insightful view of the economic landscape as we enter the new year. Doug foresees falling stocks, falling inflation (or possibly modest deflation) and a continuing rally in long-term Treasurys. He is […]
January 5th, 2023 | Energy, Interest Rates, Recession
HoweStreet.com Radio - San Francisco Real Estate, Office Vacancies
January 2nd, 2023 | Beware If 2023 Gets Off to a Good Start
Rick's Picks - Be skeptical if stocks start the new year on a positive note, since that would be the perfect way for Mr Market to set the hook to trap bulls and bears alike. It would probably take most of the opening session on Tuesday for an enticing rally to build up steam, since the bears who […]
December 25th, 2022 | Santa Rally Crawls Toward the New Year
Rick's Picks - In an economy that over decades has grown increasingly dependent on revved-up holiday sales, investors have responded by praying more fervently each year for a Santa rally. It’s an odd metaphor, however, considering that Wall Street even at its seasonal cheeriest has a heart as cold and dark as volcanic glass. The Santa of investors’ […]
December 22nd, 2022 | Negative Santa Claus Rally, US Dollar, Gold
HoweStreet.com Radio - Shorting, Recession, High Tech
December 18th, 2022 | ‘AAPL Indicator’ Predicting a 10% Plunge
Rick's Picks - The modest bear market rally begun in October likely ended last week when stocks turned sharply lower after failing to achieve clear ‘Hidden Pivot’ rally targets. Now, if the selling should continue to exceed minor abcd targets as occurred last week, that would affirm that Papa Bear is back. AAPL in particular, the world’s most […]
December 11th, 2022 | $AAPL – Apple Computer (Last:142.18)
Rick's Picks - AAPL looked like hell last week, stopping out the point ‘C’ low of a weak bullish pattern, but making little headway on the obligatory bounce. Desperation will not provide the distribution opportunities its handlers seek, but their one good trick — gapping the stock down on the opening in order to exhaust sellers — hasn’t […]
December 4th, 2022 | Maybe 2023 Won’t Be So Bad
Rick's Picks - Last week’s commentary went full contrarian with the seemingly nutty idea that 2023 could be a dull year for investors despite the looming possibility of a global economic collapse. Inflation, deep recession, war, disease and political unrest are just a few of the factors that could bring a badly limping financial system down. But suppose […]
November 27th, 2022 | The Case for a Merely Choppy 2023
Rick's Picks - Early in October, it lifted my spirits to be able to bloviate about how a too-widely-anticipated October crash seemed as likely as a Martian invasion. One lunar calendar-based prediction in particular had October 21 as the crash date, although the forecast went squishy at sundown that day when dark clouds failed to materialize over Wall […]
November 23rd, 2022 | Gold, Gold Miners, US Dollar, Twitter
HoweStreet.com Radio - Inflation, Deflation, Crude Oil
November 20th, 2022 | What Twitter and Bitcoin Have in Common
Rick's Picks - Twitter and bitcoin share a key similarity in that their success while it lasted was just hubris. Realize that both were birthed by a virtual medium capable of monetizing turds if there is any discoverable demand for them whatsoever. Cardi B’s megahit single Wet Ass Pussy was proof of this. Twitter proffered turds in the form of […]
November 9th, 2022 | Market Reaction to US Midterms
HoweStreet.com Radio - Could Bitcoin’s $3000 drop just be the start?
October 23rd, 2022 | Bear Market Kabuki
Rick's Picks - The seemingly strong rally that ended the week merely balanced out three days of bland weakness that had preceded it. In the S&P 500, the upthr ust steepened by the hour but ultimately failed to surpass any important prior peaks. The bear seems out to challenge bulls and bears alike with its obviousness. For one, […]
October 16th, 2022 | October ‘Surprise’ Too Widely Advertised?
Rick's Picks - The spread between permabulls and permabears is at an extreme these days, even for October. This is the month when pessimists’ hopes are highest that an epic bear market will correct dangerous excesses that have been building up in the financial system for more than 50 years. A presumptive and welcome side effect of such […]
October 13th, 2022 | Will Cash Survive a Move to Digital Currencies?
HoweStreet.com Radio - US hitting 40 year inflation high
October 10th, 2022 | What Rough Beast Cometh?
Rick's Picks - A pen-pal from the world of very high-tech inventions is a self-described ‘collapsitarian’. He wrote me recently to say he enjoys these weekly screeds for their relentlessly glum insightfulness. (For your information, he is 50% in cash, 25% in gold, and 25% short stocks.) Longtime readers will know that I seldom shout ‘The Sky Is […]
October 2nd, 2022 | Investment Advice from a Millionaire Barber
Rick's Picks - [Louie Piro, my barber when I lived in Mountain View CA shortly before Google arrived, became a multimillionaire with a simple investment strategy. I thought of him the other day when a Rick’s Picks subscriber wondered aloud in the chat room which investments are most likely to prosper in the recessionary hard times that Americans will soon […]
September 29th, 2022 | Bear Market, Gold, Lithium, Real Estate
HoweStreet.com Radio - Trader Confidence, Key Indicators