ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
May 5, 2024 | Gold, Oil and Putin’s Grand Plan
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 […]
April 28, 2024 | Red-Hot Nvidia Recalls RCA Mania of 1929
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 […]
April 21, 2024 | Prepare to Sell in May and Go Away
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 […]
April 14, 2024 | Springtime for Bonds?
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. […]
April 7, 2024 | At Ringside for Another Freaky Friday
[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 […]
March 31, 2024 | Why We Fail to Fix Things
[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 […]
March 24, 2024 | Bullish and Bored? Here’s the Cure…
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 […]
March 17, 2024 | Something’s Got to Give
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 […]
March 10, 2024 | P.T. Barnum Would Have Loved Bitcoin
Bitcoin mania looks likely to blow itself out at somewhat higher levels. The bitcoin ETF chart above suggests buyers will encounter significant resistance at 64.95, a Hidden Pivot target that lies 5% above Friday’s closing price. If this impediment gives way easily or is exceeded for two consecutive weeks on a closing basis, however, you […]
March 3, 2024 | The Dregs Take Flight
The endgame inched closer to singularity last week with rigged rallies in stocks that had rightfully been given up for dead. There was the more than doubling in the price of Beyond Meat, for example. Until last week, shares of the veggie-burger upstart seemed content to scuddle sideways on a tortuous path to death. […]
February 25, 2024 | The Fallacy of the Wall of Worry
So much for the wall of worry! Optimists and visionaries supposedly climb it while ignoring troublesome signs that leave most investors on the sidelines, paralyzed with fear. Last week, as soaring shares of Nvidia tugged stocks higher around the world, speculators swarmed the wall like cockroaches gorging themselves on dried beer, glue and animal feces. […]
February 18, 2024 | The Coming Crash of Bigness
[Globalism has peaked, says my colleague James Howard Kunstler, and with it a trend toward corporate bigness that has all but extinguished quality and vitality from the marketplace. Bloated corporatism is about to come crashing down, he says, in a process of creative destruction that will allow us to rescale the economy so that it better […]
February 11, 2024 | Even Bulls Are Getting Nervous
However high stocks climb, there will always be an earnest, bespectacled egghead on Wall Street ready to tell us why shares are likely to keep on rising. Here’s Yung-Yu Ma, chief Investment officer for a firm called BMO Wealth Management and a finance professor at Lehigh University: “A better economy, healthy profits and lower inflation,” […]
February 4, 2024 | Wall Street Guns Its Perpetual Motion Engine
Here are a couple of headlines concerning the economy that appeared atop Bloomberg’s front page on the same day last week. Taken together, they could make one’s head spin. First the happy news: IMF Lifts World GDP Outlook on U.S. Strength. But here’s the article just beneath: UPS to Cut 12,000 Jobs. A case of schizophrenia on the […]
January 28, 2024 | Gold Stocks and the Coming Judas Swing
[This week’s commentary was written by David Isham, a longtime Rick’s Picks subscribers from Northern California who has been investing in bullion since he was in grade school four decades ago. RA ] Although gold appears to have broken out of a triple top and recently hit fresh all-time highs at $2152, the gold miners are trading at the […]
January 21, 2024 | Onward and Upward for Perhaps a Little Longer
When forecasting stock prices, it helps to view the market as a crazed creature driven by fear, greed, and most of all, stupidity. Of course, everyone but the “theme”-obsessed chimpanzees who purport to manage your money understands that the stock market’s heedless ascent into horrifying news is rock-bottom stupid. In this case, the very bad […]
January 14, 2024 | Deflating a Weak Argument Against Deflation
Reader Scott Baker took issue last week with my unsettling prediction of a deflationary bust. The mountain of debts that I believe will cause this is really no big deal, says Baker. He quotes economist Michael Hudson to back him up: “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be.” That certainly doesn’t sound very menacing. So […]
January 7, 2024 | Advancing the Timeline of Economic Collapse
The stock market is so pumped with hubris, lies and delusions that I’m beginning to doubt whether the bull market will see Microsoft rally to $430 before everything comes crashing down. I’ve been using MSFT as a bellwether because it has been the strongest megacap stock in the world for the last four years, and […]
December 31, 2023 | Can We Repeat 2023?
In these way-too-interesting times, there aren’t many publications that would trumpet a New Year’s Eve headline like the one above. It topped the front page of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, however, a tribute to the Sunshine State’s winning performance on the playing field. Two college basketball teams, University of Miami and Florida American University, made […]
December 24, 2023 | Celebrating Christmas in Unmerry Times
[The following was written by my good friend James Trabulse. A devout Catholic, Jim regularly attends a Latin mass. He is also a gifted trader who brings rigorous science and outside-the-box thinking to nearly everything he does, including playing golf, staying healthy, cooking savory dinners and training Olympic-caliber athletes. RA ] Merry Christmas, and may the Lord’s blessings […]
December 17, 2023 | Gold Can’t Pussyfoot Forever
Most of us had been expecting gold to explode through the $2000 “barrier” and soar into the wild blue yonder. Instead, it spasmed to $2152 for a nanosecond on December 4, then crashed back down below $2000 like an anvil dropped into an elevator shaft. What happened? Gold is most certainly in a […]
December 10, 2023 | Why Liberals Dump Their Oldest Friends
[This essay originally appeared here in July 2022 and was written by a friend who spends a lot of time thinking outside the box. His provocative thesis is that that there is a physiological basis for our political differences; moreover, he notes, liberals cancel and ghost their conservative friends for reasons that are tied to […]
December 3, 2023 | My Brash Call for a Top
They don’t ring a bell at the top, as the saying goes, but it’s hard to see how Mr. Market can avoid it this time. The stock market’s heedless, nutty short squeeze since October will end when Microsoft hits $430, probably early in the new year. It’s that simple. How do I know this? […]
November 26, 2023 | What Has AI Done for YOU Lately?
AI hubris has become America’s chief source of good news. Over the past year, artificial intelligence surpassed bitcoin as mankind’s most easily imaginable pathway to quick riches, shortened work weeks, ingenious solutions to every problem, and endless satisfactions. An AI-assisted world supposedly will revolutionize the way we do business, enabling high school graduates, even […]
November 19, 2023 | Celebrating the Wealth Effect’s Last Hurrah
Lacy Hunt, a gray eminence of the financial world and no doomsayer, was out with a Hoisington Report recently that should scare the pants off anyone concerned about the direction of the U.S. economy. His meticulously detailed take on a commercial real estate debacle that has been metastasizing for more than a year should dispel […]