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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 […]
November 12, 2023 | Revved-Up Microsoft Is the Engine that Could
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 5, 2023 | Markets, Riots, War and Peace
[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 29, 2023 | Our #1 Bellwether Defies October Curse
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 22, 2023 | The Smell of Napalm in the Morning
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 15, 2023 | Be Among the First to Panic
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 8, 2023 | This War Is Not a Tradeable Event
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 1, 2023 | ‘October Surprise’ Drumbeat Quickens
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 24, 2023 | One Last Turn of the Screw, then REAL Pain
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 17, 2023 | A Stroll Down Disinflation Lane
[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 10, 2023 | Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ McMansions?
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 […]