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A Night of Hell For a PC User

April 13 2007
I was up till nearly sunrise the other night, sleepless over the possible fate of Don Imus. Just kidding, of course. We knew almost for certain that the late, great king of crank was dead meat from the moment he proposed a suck-up powwow with the Rutgers girls’ basketball team. What kept me up was not the imminent prospect of Imus’ defenestration, but rather the poltergeists that...
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There'll Never Be Another Don Imus

April 12 2007
We don’t know what the current Vegas line is on Don Imus survival as a salaried celebrity, but it wasn’t a good sign when he tried to arrange a meeting with the ostensibly aggrieved Rutgers girls’ basketball team. What could the Nastiest Guy in Radio have said to them that would have brought them around?  The “I’m just a jerk” line might...
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Comex Gold 'Easy' Prey at Night...

April 11 2007
We may be living in “interesting times,” but you’d never know it from watching the stock market closely.  On most days, monitoring shares from minute to minute and hour to hour is about as interesting as watching mold form on bread. Stocks typically establish a trading range within the first hour, then spend the rest of the day doing the...
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Is It Merely Fuel That Iran Seeks?

April 10 2007
Iran announced yesterday that its crash program to develop nuclear fuel is far more ambitious than previously acknowledged. Specifically, the number of centrifuges now being employed to enrich uranium is nearly ten times the 328 that were known before yesterday to exist. But is it possible the effort to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale is...
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Inflation Fixation Misses Picture

April 09 2007
In his latest commentary, Pimco’s Paul McCulley argues that the Fed should shift its inflation “comfort zone” higher in order to better manage the risks of both inflation and deflation. The comfort zone is currently 1%-2%, but maintaining price stability within that range forces the central bank to react “asymmetrically” to the ebb and flow of deflationary risk, he says. When...
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Will Deflation Be Postponed?

April 05 2007
Is the economy about to experience one last boom before everything comes crashing down?  iTulip founder Eric Janszen evidently thinks so, and that is the crux of my argument with him. We debated this issue yesterday, along with some others, including whether economic life as we know it will end in inflation or deflation. Regular readers...
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Wall Street Hot For Hostage Deal

April 04 2007
June was busting out on Wall Street yesterday, but what to make of the supposedly bullish impact of a possible “deal” for the 15 British hostages?  It’s hard to believe that investors, if not necessarily Tony Blair and the free world, would be so thrilled to settle up with the Iranians on terms suitable to jihadists. Almost exactly 25...
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A Drumroll For Goldman

April 03 2007
Because Citigroup has been in the financial dog house lately, we look to the shares of Goldman Sachs Group for clues about the health and longevity of this bull market, now in its 24th year. It stands to reason that a company so thoroughly entrenched in the smoke-and-mirrors business, not to mention extremely well-connected to people in high places, would outperform...
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Whale-Watching Is a Baja Delight

April 02 2007
We’ll ignore Friday’s meaningless dirge on Wall Street for the moment, focusing instead on the seasonal delights of Baja whale-watching.  The following is a first-hand report from my sister Linda, a San Francisco attorney who was recently in Mexico visiting some old friends. She got first dibs on the writing genes in my family, so don’t...
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Summer Boom For Refiners?

April 02 2007
Since gas at the pump seems primed to surge above $3.00 before the summer driving season even begins, I thought it might be a good time to check some NYMEX charts to see whether they concur. In fact, June Crude is hovering near an important price target at 68.76, having spiked to a 68.09 top earlier in the week. My hunch is that if it blows past the higher number – meaning,...
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Bernanke Frets Over 'Egg Money'

March 29 2007
I’ve assumed all along that the current Fed chairman was secretly frightened, as well he should be, of the catastrophic risk of a debt deflation. He didn’t get the nickname “Helicopter Ben” for no good reason, you know. But maybe I’ve had the guy pegged wrong? His speech on Wednesday ignored deflation’s grave risk to the U.S. and global economies yet again, focusing instead...
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Oil, Gold Poised To Signal War

March 27 2007
Will Iran attempt to throttle the 17 million barrels of oil that come through the Persian Gulf each day?  If so, energy traders have been acting so far as though a blockade affecting a third of the world’s seaborne supply is possible but not likely. Even though April crude surged sharply yesterday, its intraday peak failed by eight cents...
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Two Gold Bugs Ponder Negatives

March 26 2007
In the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, the extraterrestrial scientist Klaatu demonstrated the technological prowess of his civilization to the bellicose citizens of Earth by making every powered device on the planet stop working for an hour. On Friday, one could have imagined that Klaatu was back, this time training his dark...
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'Feisty' Gold Loves to Tease

March 23 2007
Comex Gold has been a real tease whenever it has gotten near our Hidden Pivots in recent weeks.  In late February, for instance, it flounced around for a few days within a dime of an important rally target at 690.60.  We figured that once it got past that Hidden Pivot it would blast off to...
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Fed to Hedgies: "Come & Get It!"

March 22 2007
For the sixth straight month, the Fed did nothing, but we’ll take Bill Gross’s word for it that this particular instance of nothingness signifies easing just ahead. We can’t say we were much surprised by this, having predicted here in January that not only would the Fed start to loosen again, but that it would do so sooner and much more vigorously than anyone appeared to...
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We Needn't Fear A Bull Gone Loco

March 21 2007
While no one can say exactly when this bull market, now in its 25th year, will finally succumb to gravity, it is still possible to get short whenever we please, and with relatively little risk. Take yesterday, for instance. In the Touts section of...
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Jim Rogers Joins Home-Bust Crazies

March 20 2007
A round of applause for globetrotting guru Jim Rogers, who has forsaken the nurturing bosom of respectability to join the wild-eyed crazies in the housing-bust camp.  "Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas;” he recently told Reuters. “There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had...
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Does Atlantic City Face Hard Times?

March 19 2007
Are Atlantic City’s casino headed for hard times? That’s the story I get from a childhood friend of mine who’s lived in the resort all his life, has owned some nightclubs there, and is pretty plugged into the local scene. He even thinks there’s a chance that The Donald, who has actually run a casino into bankruptcy, is making plans to bail out....
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Industrial Condos Red-Hot in So-Cal

March 16 2007
We’ve watched the shares of homebuilders unravel for more than a year, but what if I were to tell you there’s a side to the construction business that’s still going...
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Chalk Up One For Levitators

March 15 2007
A sharp plunge yesterday might have brought emetic relief to a stock market bloated with indigestion, but it was not to be. Instead, shares teeter-tottered most of the day, eventually ending up on the plus side, with the Dow Industrials registering an unpersuasive gain of 57 points. The reason the market was unable to do what might otherwise have come naturally is that European...
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800-Point Plunge Ahead for DJIA?

March 14 2007
Whoooosh! What will Wednesday bring?  Lower prices, most likely, if Microsoft is any kind of bellwether. We were waiting for the stock to dive yesterday to a Hidden Pivot support at 26.84 that had been flagged in the intraday notes section of...
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We...Want...To Pump You Up!

March 13 2007
You’re 50 pounds overweight and you haven’t worked out regularly since college. You’d probably get completely winded if you tried to run around the block, and you can’t imagine playing a round of 18 without a cart.. Now imagine what that first day back at the gym would feel like, surrounded by hard-body types: guys who look like they just finished boot camp at Lejeune; women...
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Inflate v. Deflate: Nothing to Argue

March 12 2007
I decided a while back that getting drawn into yet another inflation vs. deflation debate would be a waste of my time, since no one in the inflationist camp has ever challenged me with a reasonably good question, much less persuaded me that hyperinflation was any more than an extremely remote possibility. A recent exchange of e-mails with one of that camp’s most capable and...
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Careful Shorting Up the Wazoo!

March 09 2007
Permabear though I be, I will nonetheless continue to warn you that, with respect to bull-mania, it ain’t over till it’s over. Take a look at the chart below and you will see a stochastic indicator that has begun to roll up from its most egregiously oversold lows since last summer. While this is no guarantee that the Dow Industrials are about to coming roaring back, neither is it...
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Tip for Chartists: View Them as Art

March 08 2007
Each and every weekday evening, in the “Current Touts” section of Rick’s Picks, we publish Hidden Pivot targets and detailed strategies to guide traders...
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Mere 144 Points Could Turn Tide

March 07 2007
Bulls made a solid effort yesterday to get something going, but it will take more than a 157-point Dow rally to re-engage our interest. Yes, we still have that unachieved target at 13045, a Hidden Pivot that lies 250 points above the recent record high. But it looks like the Matterhorn relative to the lows recorded earlier this week, and...
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Place Your Bets, If You Dare...

March 06 2007
  Could this ugliness take another four-and-a-half years to run its course? That is the clear implication of the chart below. The deceptively demure graph, from economist Martin Armstrong, has taken on a significance and credibility it didn’t have one short week ago, when I reproduced it in the Intraday...
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Place Your Bets, If You Dare...

March 05 2007
Could this ugliness take another four-and-a-half years to run its course? That is the clear implication of the chart below. The deceptively demure graph, from economist Martin Armstrong, has taken on a significance and credibility it didn’t have one short week ago, when I reproduced it in the Intraday Notes...
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Bear Is Gathering Power Each Day

March 02 2007
If the week ends with yet one more timid rally, bulls will be under serious pressure to deliver on Monday. Yesterday, it almost looked as though Da Boyz had shorts on the ropes when the Dow Industrials halved a 200-point opening loss in mere minutes. Alas, the remainder of the day was spent in a wallow, and by the final bell the Indoos had not exceeded a single peak recorded the...
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Bounce Inspires Little Confidence

March 01 2007
Yesterday’s meek rebound was not the kind of rally to inspire confidence. Even so, we’re inclined to give the bull the benefit of the doubt until such time as the implications of Tuesday’s avalanche are corroborated by certain technical signs mentioned in my commentary yesterday. The commentary was itself inspired by a chart of homebuilder DHI Horton whose significance welled...
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Bulls Hang On By a Thread

February 28 2007
We broke ranks with the permabears decisively last summer, when the Dow Industrials were trading nearly two thousand points beneath a 13045 target I projected at that time. Ever since, and until yesterday, it had been more than just a little satisfying to watch the Indoos climb relentlessly higher, even as I continued to tell you that the stock market stank to high heaven. I...
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No Avoiding Housing News

February 27 2007
Investors spent Monday walking on eggshells. Do they perhaps think that by acting so meekly they’ll be able to avoid confronting all of  the important economic data due out this week? We’ll be better able to judge for ourselves this morning, when figures for existing home sales in January are released. The consensus expects a very mild...
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Who Will Flout Next Depression?

February 26 2007
When a deflationary collapse finally comes, we shouldn’t expect it to bring a flood of money-making opportunities, since it will not be the dot-com boom in reverse.  There will be no instant billionaires unloading insider shares for 10,000 times what they paid for them. Students just out of...
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Hula 'Failure' Poses a Threat

February 23 2007
We’ve been using a 1469.50 rally target in the mini-S&P -- a so-called “hula number.” This is a term that I apply to forecasts about which I am so certain that, if they do not pan out, I have pledged to don a grass skirt and dance the hula in Times Square in the middle of winter. (Look for me in front of the Marriott Marquis if the...
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Something BIG Driving Gold?

February 22 2007
Bullion’s explosive move yesterday was attributed to a few factors, including short-covering, but the bottom line is that bullion futures appear primed to blow the supposed $700 barrier to smithereens. That would be nicely in line with our recent forecast, which was given here earlier in the week as follows: “There is granite resistance just...
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Gold's Fall Does Little Damage

February 21 2007
We gave an all-clear signal for April Gold yesterday, only to see the futures reverse direction and go into a kamikaze dive after having touched a bullish tripwire the previous day. The tripwire was in fact a Hidden Pivot rally target at 676.80, and a short-term top there had been predicted when the futures were trading $14 lower. Sure enough, on Valentine’s Day, the April...
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Easing Is Coming, But Then What?

February 20 2007
Fed easing just ahead? If there were any doubts about it before, they should melt away with this latest piece of bad news from an already staggering real estate sector: “Sharp Drop in Housing Starts Adds / To Fear of Wider Economic Impact”.  Just how sharp? In fact, construction plummeted in January to the lowest level in almost a...
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Hottest Market A Real Shocker

February 16 2007
Urban homes prices fell across the U.S. in the fourth quarter, according to the National Association of Realtors. No surprise there, given the glut of supply and the growing feeling among buyers that waiting might bring even better deals come spring. This seems logical, since would-be sellers who gave up are apt to try again, flooding the market with...
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New Way to Hedge Your Home's Value

February 15 2007
Finally, there’s a way to literally bet against the house in the event of a real estate collapse. A California firm is offering cash on the barrel head for up to 15% of the value of your home in exchange for a 52.5% share of any capital appreciation when you sell it.  We at...
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Stocks Primed For a Goosing?

February 14 2007
Some analyst at Merrill got excited yesterday about GM’s dubious plan to revive SUV giveaways, and, lo, the Dow Industrial Average takes a hundred-point leap. But as the Nasdaq chart below makes clear, even speculators who bought yesterday’s rally didn’t have their hearts in it. More like their cojones, which got caught in the ringer when Da Boyz decided to short-squeeze a stock...
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When to Turn Cautious on Gold

February 13 2007
With April Gold trading below $663 last week, we projected a $14  bull leg to at least 676.80. The good news is that we still think the futures are all but guaranteed to get there – and then some – over the very near term, and that’s despite yesterday’s bout of weakness, which saw the April contract shed nearly $10 since topping at...
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With Anna Gone, We Soldier On...

February 12 2007
Wall Street soldiered on Friday as a distraught nation grieved over the mysterious death of its apparent favorite daughter, Anna Nicole Smith. Trying to make sense of it all, the news media pandered non-stop, offering us a minutely detailed recapitulation of Ms. Smith’s final days, of her most trivial trials and tribulations, of the sadness that evidently haunted the famously fey...
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Jump, You Jerk!

February 09 2007
After an ugly opening (see chart below), market bellwether IBM valiantly clawed its way back to a small gain at the close, helping the Dow Industrials pare earlier losses by nearly two-thirds. Yesterday’s comeback was so very impressive, in fact, that we can only surmise that bulls are about to get their teeth kicked in.  To paraphrase...
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Hitting Bullseyes Has Its Problems

February 08 2007
The fact that the Dow Industrials rose less than a point yesterday hints at the soporific tedium that has gripped the stock market lately. Fortunately, as long as shares are moving even slightly there will always be something to trade. And so there was -- in the E-mini Nasdaq (NQ) futures. Here is the Tout that went out in the chat room early in the session, when the mini-contract...
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Steve Jobs For President

February 07 2007
Too bad Steve Jobs doesn’t have a ready antidote for Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, because his latest idea for the music industry is pure genius: Let companies that sell songs over the Internet do away with antipiracy software. His argument has the virtue of simplicity. The software doesn’t work to begin with, he notes, so why let “digital rights management (DRM)” hold...
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'Perfect Storm' In Real Estate?

February 06 2007
We were offering shares of D.R. Horton short yesterday when the stock turned weak, denying us the fat pitch we’d hoped would start the day. Let’s keep at it, though, since there evidently are still a few bulls around to drive the stock higher once this pullback has run its course. How do we know there are bulls, even though the housing market is looking worse than it’s looked in...
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Housing Bulls: You Are Warned!

February 05 2007
For those betting on a soft landing, Friday’s statistics were the stuff of wet dreams, so blissfully sub-par that you might think the U.S. economy was smoking opium. A slight uptick in joblessness and hourly earnings was gently offset by weak payroll numbers and a six-minute decrease in the average work week. All in all, it was a pretty mellow mix of yin and yang, considering...
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TGIF...

February 02 2007
The Winter Wonderland thing is getting a bit tiresome here in the Denver area, what with the season’s seventh snowstorm currently heavily in progress. I drove 15 miles to meet a friend for lunch and the roads were fine in what was light snow. But 90 minutes later, when I returned home, there were white-out conditions along much of the Front Range, and I was once again poking along...
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In Defense Of Biden

February 01 2007
Talk about bad luck!  In announcing his 2008 candidacy, Joe Biden managed to pick the slowest news day of 2007 to say something about Barack Obama that was bound to offend the news media’s scandal-mongering "Gotcha!" squad. Here’s what the senior Senator from Delaware actually said: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American...
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One Expert Who Can Spot a Bubble

January 31 2007
First things first: Click here to access “100 Bottles of Beer on the...
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'Impulsive' Gold Taking a Pause

January 30 2007
Most mining stocks couldn’t hold onto the modest gains they’d racked up early in yesterday’s session, but before you sink into despair take a look at the chart...
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Avoiding Vista Like the Plague

January 29 2007
It’s hard for me to conceive of eager buyers lining up to score a PC loaded with Vista, the new operating system from Microsoft. But then, I’ve never been able to understand why people would queue to pay good money for tickets to a Madonna concert. Or opt for a $100 enema at a spa. Still, when Dell starts taking phone orders for Vista-loaded computers this weekend, there are...
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Pandemic Jitters, Or Fear of Bust?

January 26 2007
...
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Is Dot-Com Mania Back?

January 26 2007
After-hours trading Wednesday evening was providing a breath of spring – Spring 2000, that is, for all who can recall the ominous, early rumblings of the dot-com bust.  With the Nasdaq index leading the broad market higher, eBay is up nearly 7% at the moment, Netflix a tad more. And how about those ashen comets from the past, Rambus and...
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Is Bullion's Wallow Over?

January 24 2007
Gold’s rally since the beginning of 2007 is most encouraging, but how can bulls be sure they won’t get sucker-punched yet again if they climb aboard at current levels?  Using judicious trailing stops and nailing down partial profits is an obvious answer. But another is paying close attention to each rally leg, noting in particular...
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Disquieting Signs

January 23 2007
Speaking as a permabear who sees no chance whatsoever that the U.S. economy will be able to avert a deflationary collapse within the next few years, you can probably imagine what a delightful diversion it has been for me to have had reason to tout an extravagantly bullish, 13045 target for the Dow Industrial Average. The target is a compelling Hidden Pivot that comes from the...
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'Dirtball Indicator' Points to Rally

January 22 2007
Citi shares have been out of favor in recent weeks, but there were signs on Friday that the stock may soon be ready to lead the broad averages higher once again. We have always maintained that as long as the bank stocks continue to advance, bull-mania on Wall Street would keep chugging along.  It seems logical that such stocks would tend...
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A Powerful Tool To Read Trends

January 19 2007
One of the most useful tricks taught at the Hidden Pivot seminar is the “look-to-the-left” rule. To apply it, simply fix your eye on a rally peak, then move backward in time along the chart. If it turns out that the new peak has surpassed at least two prior peaks to the left of it, we can confidently infer that the rally has further to go. More bullish still is a rally that...
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CNBC Madman Not All Blather

January 18 2007
After watching Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” on CNBC yesterday for the first time, I’m forced to admit that he’s not all blather. Actually, it was the first time I’ve tuned to Cramer with the sound on, although I’ve watched him soundlessly many times on the hermetically sealed sauna-room TV at the local gym. Even with the sound off, you’d swear you can hear the guy, since practically...
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Global Warming Takes a Breather

January 17 2007
For once, a winter storm appears to have missed Colorado. There’s still plenty of snow on the ground here in Boulder, but not much on the roads, and the ice storm that has blanketed about a third of the U.S., from Texas to New England, is wreaking most of its destruction well to the south and east of this snow-weary region. Imagine waking up to icicles as far south as San Antonio....
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Bear Bonanza? Don't Bet On It

January 16 2007
“Rapid Plunge in Price of Oil May Fuel Growth”. That was the headline on Friday’s lead story in The Wall Street Journal.  The same day, I received a link to an article at FinancialSense.com asserting that the stock markets had been “worn thin by lower oil...
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OPEC Should Try Prayer

January 12 2007
I’ll believe energy is in a bear market –as opposed to a nasty correction –  when I see unleaded regular down around $1.50 a gallon. Sure, it’s nice to read for a change that  oft-beleaguered consumers evidently have OPEC on the run:  “An emergency...
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'Printing Money' A Stupid Fallacy

January 11 2007
Even dumber than those who believe the housing bust has already run its course are those who think the Fed will be able to hold deflation at bay by “printing money”. This is such a contemptibly stupid idea that one would think it would have no currency at all outside of the academy, CNBC and the Federal Reserve’s own Open Market Committee. In fact, it represents the popular wisdom...
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Apple Reinvents The Cell Phone

January 10 2007
Leave it to Apple to reinvent the cell phone. And so they have evidently, at least as far as Wall Street is concerned. Voracious investors bid up AAPL shares by more than $7 yesterday (see chart below) while simultaneously pounding those of a competitor, Research In Motion. Both stocks went crazy as Steve Jobs was introducing the iPod-based phone at MacWorld in San Francisco. The...
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A Punk Rally

January 09 2007
Although Monday’s modest rally could be the start of a more significant thrust, I wouldn’t bet on it.  Look at the DJIA chart below and you can see why. Although the blue chip average recouped an opening hour deficit and then some, its intraday peak failed to surpass the 12447 high recorded last Friday. Usually, when the bull means...
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A Gold Support Lies Just Below

January 08 2007
We caught the exact low of gold’s $23 plunge in the chat room Friday with a 603.00 projection, but I wouldn’t count on it to hold. The good news is that a promising Hidden Pivot support lies not far below it at 594.50. It looks capable of engendering the turnaround so many have been patiently awaiting for so long. If the action in February Gold plays out as expected, it would...
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Bullion Forecast: Pitiless as Usual

January 05 2007
My short-term outlook for the precious metals sector has been negative and still calls for a drop of at least 7% in bellwether Newmont, to 40.94.  Even so, we could still cross our fingers and root for a potentially important turn in the XAU as early as this morning. That’s because a compelling Hidden Pivot support lies not far beneath...
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DJIA Reversal Hints of Trouble

January 04 2007
So here’s the score after one day of trading in 2007:  Da Boyz 1, Public 0.  Wednesday’s deftly managed volatility was nothing short of breathtaking – a day when even the savviest traders may have found themselves bamboozled at key turning points....
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White Christmas And Then Some...

January 02 2007
Happy New Year and warm greetings from Colorado, the snow capital of America! (with apologies to subscribers from Buffalo).  I high-tailed it home from Vail a couple of days earlier than planned, since I didn’t want to risk getting stuck in the mountains, estranged from my wife and kids, on New Year’s Eve.  I’d...
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The Billionaire Mud-Wrestler

December 28 2006
I never would have imagined myself rooting for Rosie O’Donnell, but then, that was before she got into a pissing match with Donald Trump. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rosie has more hair on her chest, and of a finer quality, than The Donald has on his head. That’s one of the reasons I’d make her the favorite in a Greco-Roman wrestling match against Trump. As a talk show host, though, Rosie was...
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The Billionaire Mud-Wrestler

December 27 2006
I never would have imagined myself rooting for Rosie O’Donnell, but then, that was before she got into a pissing match with Donald Trump. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rosie has more hair on her chest, and of a finer quality, than The Donald has on his head. That’s one of the reasons I’d make her the favorite in a Greco-Roman wrestling match against Trump. As a talk show host, though, Rosie was...
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Marking Time Till Year's End

December 26 2006
As 2006 draws to a close, and with Wall Street’s year-end bonuses in-the-bag, we shouldn’t expect much more than meaningless noise this week. Expect sellers who ganged up on stocks in the days preceding Christmas to recede into the background, allowing the Street’s wonted OPM-driven cluelessness to work in favor of share prices for the remainder of the year. The supposed reason for the selling on...
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Colorado's Big Storm

December 22 2006
How would you like to spend Christmas Eve at...Denver International Airport?  Unfortunately, that question may not be hypothetical for thousands of travelers currently stranded there by the worst blizzard Colorado’s seen since the huge snowstorm of March ’03. That one was even worse, but at least it didn’t occur just days before Christmas, when the Denver...
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A Free Service For Gold Bugs

December 21 2006
Some readers have asked why my essays and price forecasts no longer appear at 321Gold. Regrettably, this situation appears permanent, and so, too, the loss of a one-time friend, Bob Moriarty, the site’s founder. The good news is that I am launching a chat room at rival site...
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How to Invest In High Rollers

December 20 2006
Private investors bagged another trophy yesterday with the acquisition of Harrah’s Entertainment. The price was $17.1 billion, plus the assumption of $10.7 billion in debt. That’s not exactly small change, and it drives home the fact that more or less unlimited capital is available to dealmakers these days, provided the deal itself makes sense. Will Harrah’s prove to be a lucrative...
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Citigroup Can Predict the Top

December 19 2006
We’ve had our crosshairs trained on a 13045 Dow target since late September, convinced the blue chip average would get there come hell or high water. Now, a similarly outlandish target has emerged in Citi, until recently somewhat of a laggard in an otherwise very strong banking sector. Our precise objective for the stock lies at 64.73, a Hidden Pivot that’s about 9 dollars above yesterday’s...
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Street's Blowout Spills into Malls

December 18 2006
With some key averages reaching record highs on Friday, the Dow Industrials have now come within 530 points of the 13045 target first broached here several months ago. I was incredulous then and remain so, but what’s a chartist to do when the technical indicators points unambiguously higher?  For my part, I’ve simply stuck with a few mechanical indicators...
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Will Boomers Shun Florida?

December 15 2006
If you’re looking for rock-bottom bargains in real estate, try south Florida – a decade from now, that is.  Ever wondered what’s going to happen to all of those quiet...
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Will Boomers Shun Florida?

December 14 2006
If you’re looking for rock-bottom bargains in real estate, try south Florida – a decade from now, that is.  Ever wondered what’s going to happen to all of those quiet...
» Read more

Can Fed Really Avert Deflation?

December 13 2006
With the Dow average down 75 points in the early going yesterday, it felt for a little while as though the stock market was about to take an emetic plunge. Instead, the blue chip average got traction just above Friday’s lows, then rallied to finish slightly down on the day. From the looks of the chart below, we’re inclined to view this go-nowhere action as consolidation rather than distribution – a...
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China's Role In a Deflation

December 12 2006
“How the Global Boom Might End” is the title of a Sean Corrigan essay just out from Mises Institute. Corrigan’s think-pieces are always enlightening, and although this one gets the point across, I found it very heavy going. Moreover, he reveals a degree of optimism about the global economy that is arguably unwarranted. Some readers might have inferred as much from the article’s title, which could be...
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The Fat Lady Is Warming Up

December 11 2006
Check out the chart at bottom, which is complete through Friday. Is this an internet-stock-on-steroids – Google, perhaps? An oil company that just hit a gusher? A drug stock with a promising new treatment for cancer? Guess again. The chart shows price action in the world’s largest bank, Citigroup. Even in the context of two years’ worth of ups and downs, Friday’s thrust looked pretty impressive. The...
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Lying Our Way To Prosperity...

December 08 2006
Hard to believe stocks went all wobbly yesterday in nervous anticipation of payroll numbers due out this morning. With Ford and GM drifting steadily toward bankruptcy, and what remains of America’s manufacturing economy dying from the economic equivalent of pancreatic cancer, what sort of “numbers” could Wall Street possibly be looking for?  The ironies...
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Deflation's Power Lost to Ignorance

December 07 2006
Shares of bellwether IBM are on the move once again, beckoning the broad averages to get back in bullish gear. We died holding IBM November 95 calls last month, but with the stock now pushing against that strike with eight trading days to go before December expiration, we’ll be looking for the rally to reach the century mark, and soon. In percentage terms, a similar move by the Dow Industrials would...
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Deflation's Power Lost to Ignorance

December 06 2006
Shares of bellwether IBM are on the move once again, beckoning the broad averages to get back in bullish gear. We died holding IBM November 95 calls last month, but with the stock now pushing against that strike with eight trading days to go before December expiration, we’ll be looking for the rally to reach the century mark,...
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Yuletide Nuttiness ...and $2500 Gold!

December 05 2006
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas on Wall Street, with stocks acting nutty enough to suggest that my 13045 target for the Dow isn’t so nutty after all. At Monday’s highs, our surreal target lay a little more than 700 points above. That’s about two weeks’ worth of upside in a blow-off scenario, which is what I’ve been...
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Sydney's Great, But No Nicole...

December 04 2006
Sydney turned uncharacteristically dreary over the weekend, drenched last night by a torrential downpour that arrived amidst severe drought. Supposedly, it rains here only about 90 days a...
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Is a $20M House Ever a Bargain?

November 30 2006
Here’s a story that nicely encapsulates these interesting economic times, from the front page of Wednesday’s San Francisco Examiner:  “Agassi suffers a loss – in sale of Tiburon home.”  Who could have predicted, just a few short years ago, that someone selling a home for $20 million would have lost...
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Inflation Worries Vex the Ignorant

November 29 2006
Wall Street took a hawkish speech by Helicopter Ben in stride Tuesday  as stocks turned in a mixed performance on signs that inflation evidently is still a concern at the Fed. It’s hard to understand why the bankers should be so worried, given that home prices on Tuesday recorded their biggest drop since the government began tracking the...
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Almost Like Being in Love

November 28 2006
Admit it: Yesterday felt right as rain. The Dow Industrials opened down nearly a hundred points and looked like hell all day. It was almost like being in love. We’ve waited many months for the stock market to register at least a dim recognition of the disaster taking shape in the U.S economy, and Monday’s effort may have provided a good start. Now, if sellers can just string...
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Fear of Collapsing Dollar Premature

November 27 2006
Pretty sneaky for the world to frag the dollar the other day, when U.S. markets would surely have preferred to loll about in a traditional Friday-after-Thanksgiving stupor. So what’s next for the greenback? A Christmas-Eve gang-bang, perhaps? In any event, we should always pay close attention when the dollar is getting savaged, since the sums involved are probably sufficient on a...
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Remarkable Tale Of '100 Friends'

November 22 2006
Let’s avert our eyes from the stock market today so that we might consider instead the heartwarming saga of Marc Gold, a childhood friend of mine whose good works have attracted the attention, most recently, of the San Francisco Chronicle and radio station WBEZ in Chicago. Marc is the founder of the 100 Friends Project, and his goal is to give away as much money as possible to the...
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Outlook for Gold: Look at a Chart!

November 21 2006
With rumors swirling on Monday concerning supposed Saudi bullion purchases, Rick’s Picks subscribers tuned to the chat room wanted to know only, “Where’s...
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"Da Boyz" Is...Us!

November 20 2006
You had to marvel at the muted, insidious perfection of yesterday’s expiration-day dirge – a jazz funeral of sorts for near-the-money November puts and calls. Rick’s...
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Gay Bath House All in Day's Work

November 17 2006
On a magnificent fall day, over lunch at Sam’s in Tiburon, I spent as pleasant an afternoon as I can recall, reminiscing with my old partner in crime-solving, Kyle Rimdahl, and his helper Dorothy Jansizian. In the early 1990s, we worked together for the late Hal Lipset, the celebrated...
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Gay Bath House All in Day's Work

November 16 2006
On a magnificent fall day, over lunch at Sam’s in Tiburon, I spent as pleasant an afternoon as I can recall, reminiscing with my old partner in crime-solving, Kyle Rimdahl, and his helper Dorothy Jansizian. In the early 1990s, we worked together for the late Hal Lipset, the celebrated...
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Take the Odds On IBM Bet...

November 15 2006
Our IBM Nov 95 calls looked brain-dead when I left for breakfast at a Berkeley eatery yesterday morning. What a difference 90 minutes can make!  The stock had begun the morning on weakness,...
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Fed Will Tighten When Mars Attacks

November 14 2006
With the Consumer Price Index for October due out this Thursday, every investor and economist in bozo-dom is anxiously awaiting the latest shot-to-be-heard-’round-the-world. How utterly ridiculous that we should continue to obsess each month over whether the price of a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas, has risen by a few pennies when there is a $10 Trillion deflationary juggernaut...
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This Bull Can't Be Trusted

November 13 2006
December Crude has taken its sweet old time falling to the Hidden Pivot target at 56.76 that we flagged here three weeks ago, but at yesterday’s lows the futures lay within just 11 cents of that predicted bottom.  Curiously, stocks seemed largely unmoved by the seemingly beneficent price action, which should have pleased everyone but...
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Gold Dancing To Our Tune

November 10 2006
The Democrats got a somewhat churlish reception on Wall Street yesterday, suggesting there may not be much of a honeymoon in the wake of Tuesday’s sweeping political changes.  We were prepared for any outcome that would make stocks get a little crazy, but it’s too soon to tell whether it will be the calls we hold in IBM, or the QQQQ puts...
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Business as Usual The Big Winner?

November 09 2006
This is a stock market that loves to break all the rules, so perhaps we should expect the nagging uncertainties of a still-unsettled Congressional election to cause shares to rise. Wall Street supposedly abhors nothing so much as a future that is up in the air, but we may not know for weeks whether the Democrats will control both houses of Congress. Big Pharma seems to have made...
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Hold Your Nose, Pull the Lever...

November 08 2006
Maybe it’s the same story in other Congressional districts, but the race here in Colorado between Angie Paccione and Marilyn Musgrave makes a cathouse brawl seem like a quilting bee. I’ve been zapping out the sound whenever their TV commercials have aired and didn’t even know till today which one was the Democrat and which the Republican. ...
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Fuse Lit, We Wait...

November 07 2006
Is the stock market likely to go crazy after the election? A betting man might be tempted to take the odds on that one, since so many observers evidently expect angry voters to deliver a jolt of electricity to Wall Street’s vitals today. The rough consensus among forecasters I respect calls for a short, nasty correction beginning as soon as tomorrow, followed by the resumption of...
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Gold Setting Up For Big Thrust?

November 06 2006
December Gold hit our bullish target yesterday but couldn’t get past it, suggesting that some further consolidation may be needed to set up for the next big push. We’d projected a rally to at least 630.60 a few days back, and that’s almost exactly where the futures stalled yesterday, at 631.40.  However, if they...
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Short Squeeze Ready to Pop?

November 03 2006
Going back to July, the Dow’s current correction, now five days old, ranks as one of the biggies. I use that word facetiously, since in percentage terms the pullback at yesterday’s lows amounted to a piddling one-and-a-half percent from the record high of 12167 recorded on October 26. As you can see in the chart below, the correction is about halfway to the oversold zone,...
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Gold Says "UP!" Loud and Clear

November 02 2006
Gold has been moving to our Hidden Pivot targets almost to-the-tick. Yesterday’s forecast, for one, had called for a rally top at 617.50, and that is precisely where the Comex December contract paused after completing the $17 thrust we’d projected. Where to next? I broached two bullish targets in the chat room whose provenance is shown on a chart reproduced in...
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Lender Says Law Hits Deadbeats

November 01 2006
My comments here the other day about the harsh new bankruptcy code continue to elicit interesting responses. Below is a letter I received yesterday from a mortgage lender who thinks that narrowing the escape route for profligate borrowers will have a positive benefit for the rest of us. This may be true to the extent that the costs to prudent borrowers of subsidizing deadbeats who...
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Insider Condemns Bankruptcy Law

October 31 2006
Yesterday’s commentary on the new bankruptcy  laws elicited the very interesting response below from an insider, a New Jersey lawyer who is in the thick of it. Though less pessimistic than I about the long-term impact of the new law, he sees it nonetheless as restricting consumer spending, possible severely. He writes as...
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Bankruptcy Code A Ticking Bomb

October 30 2006
For once, Teddy Kennedy got it almost right. Referring to the country’s draconian new bankruptcy code, enacted last year under the cynically titled “Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act,” Kennedy called it “an attempt by the credit card industry to “squeeze an extra few dollars a month out of Americans who are down on their luck.” Kennedy has captured the spirit of the...
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Bull Market? Don't Bet on It

October 27 2006
A few words concerning my unwontedly rosy forecast for the Dow Industrials. My prediction that the blue chip average eventually will achieve 13045 was not inspired by any particular thought, nor by events that may have occurred or which could conceivably occur, in the real world. It is in fact a coldly mechanical objective derived from the long-term charts, and in its coldly...
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Where's the Harm Shorting Horton?

October 25 2006
It was morning in America yesterday on word that mortgage applications had risen 0.5 percent in the latest week.  Investors lost little time bidding up the shares of some beleaguered homebuilders that we’ll always be thrilled to short at fat prices. And we did -- in the...
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Gold & Deflation IV

October 25 2006
There may be some forecasters who think the Dow eventually will surpass the 13045 target I’ve been touting here for the last month, but certainly none who are more bearish on the economy than I.  Not even Bob Prechter, who recently lobbed a 13000 target of his own into the firmament of bullish mind-benders. There would appear to be two...
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A Subtle Sign Of Turn in Gold?

October 24 2006
We’ve been monitoring Gold’s vital signs very closely lately, since that may be the only way an investor could hope to jump back in without fear of getting maimed. Although my intermediate-term forecast calls for a potentially important low at $513, we remain open to the possibility that the turn could occur from higher levels. Right around here, perhaps?...
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$900 Gold In 2007?

October 23 2006
Gold at $900 an ounce in 2007? That’s what one well-known forecaster predicted at the Committee for Monetary Research and Education’s annual fall dinner on Thursday in New York City, and he made a pretty persuasive case. Paul Van Eeden’s...
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Best & Brightest Convene in NYC

October 20 2006
I’ve stayed on in New York City in order to attend the fall dinner of the CMRE – the...
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No Sellers Left?

October 19 2006
I’m not sure whether it was sent in jest, but I got a “say it-ain’t-so-Joe” note from a friend yesterday bearing the following subject header:  Ackerman, Last Bear, Capitulates? The answer depends on whether you’ve been following my forecast for the stock market, which has been very bullish, at least for the...
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Inflation, Where Is Thy Sting?

October 18 2006
The “core” producer price index rose an ostensibly whopping 0.6 percent in September, but only an economic nincompoop could be truly concerned about it. We prefer simply to re-add it to the list of red herrings currently distracting investors from reality. We should also note that it is one of the most abysmally stupid popular myths to have survived the late, great asset boom. With that boom now...
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Earnings Irrelevant To Stampeding Bulls

October 17 2006
Stocks marked time on Monday, allowing the purveyors of tired wisdom to rev up the silly notion that the avalanche of economic data due out this week will have some significance on the performance of shares over the near-term. We would argue otherwise -- that the Dow is in the throes of a thousand-point rally come hell or high water and that, furthermore, corporate earnings, no matter how bad, will...
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The Crazy Logic Of Dow 13000

October 16 2006
  The pundits are wildly atwitter following Friday’s record high in...
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"All the News," New York-Style

October 13 2006
I’m in New York, attending to final arrangements for this weekend’s Hidden Pivot seminar at the West Side ‘Y’ conference facility. I am also tanking up on sundry pleasures that will not be available on my return to...
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Clear and Precise Numbers for Gold

October 12 2006
The outlook for Gold is a pressing concern in the Rick’s Picks chat room on most days. Indeed, if bullion prices move merely a few dollars either way, I’m likely to be asked whether my outlook has changed significantly. Take yesterday, for instance. The December Comex contract was in the throes of a $10 rally, seemingly bucking my prediction in the day’s commentary that gold would...
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Will Crude Pull Gold Down $40?

October 11 2006
As mentioned here earlier, a 589.60 print is all it would take to jump start gold. So far, though, the December contract has acted like that’s a leap to the moon. Far from it, in fact.  The futures actually got as high as 585.50 early Tuesday morning, close enough to our bull trigger price that just a little nudge from the oil patch...
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Gold-Price Jitters Thing of the Past

October 10 2006
Seismographs and satellite cameras may have registered the force of Sunday’s nuclear explosion in North Korea, but it barely caused a ripple on the world’s stock exchanges.  U.S. shares were narrowly mixed, while Asian stocks barely budged. South Korea’s Kospi index suffered the biggest loss of all, but it was only 2.4%....
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Rumors Perk Up Gold Bugs' Day

October 09 2006
So much for my prediction here yesterday that bulls would celebrate the release of  payroll figures on Friday no matter how many new jobs were alleged to have been added to the U.S. economy. As it happened, the number fell well shy of estimates – 51,000 new non-farm jobs versus an expected 125,000. Ordinarily we might have expected such...
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All of the News Is Bullish Now

October 06 2006
Payroll figures will be out today, but we should expect stock market bulls to run with them no matter what they show. Wall Street is expecting a Commerce Department report due out this morning to say that 125,000 jobs were added to the economy in September, slightly more than in August. But if stocks continue to climb today as they’ve been doing on most days since mid-July, expect...
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Hey, Lurkers: Watch Citigroup!

October 05 2006
The silliness has quite a ways to go before our DJIA target at 13045 is reached, but yesterday’s show of exuberance will surely have earned the bulls the benefit of the doubt, if not the heart-felt respect of bears, for the time being. By way of earlier Rick’s Picks recommendations, we’d been riding call options in two high-beta performers – Merrill Lynch and Citigroup – but...
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Error in Newmont Costs Us Little

October 04 2006
Skepticism continues to be our most potent defense these days against losing our shirts in the precious metals sector. That, and more than the usual amount of caution, since Gold’s worst correction in many a year shows no sign of ending. How else to trade an asset class that in mere weeks could be down a further 15 percent -- or up 25 percent, for that...
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Managing Risk In Gold Futures

October 02 2006
The chat room at Rick’s Picks continues to be a great place to hang out for anyone wanting to keep close tabs on bullion and...
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Shorting Gold While We Wait

September 29 2006
We’re taking bullion’s possibly gratuitous ups and downs one day at a time, with results that may at times seem more gratifying to traders than to long-term investors. Fortunately, some of the gold bulls who have been active in the...
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Gold Trips Bull Signal

September 28 2006
Gold jumped back on a bullish track Wednesday as December futures pushed above a benchmark at 607.10 that we’d flagged here a couple of days earlier. From a Hidden-Pivot perspective, this feat would look more promising if the move above the two prior peaks shown in the chart had occurred in a single bound, so to speak, rather than in two separate segments. But the rally was...
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The Risk In Gold

September 27 2006
Today’s headline could just as easily have been “The Beauty of T-Bonds,” but we’ll get to that in a moment. I just wanted to make sure I had the attention of gold bugs, who have been on my mind lately. They have been a voluble and engaging presence in the...
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Gold Trigger Lies at 607.10

September 26 2006
With an unachieved downside target at $513 in December Gold, I am trying to be as conservative as possible about signaling an important, bullish turn. We don’t want to risk being premature buyers if the price of gold, currently just below $600, still has more than $80 (about 14 percent) to fall. In that context, how bullish was yesterday’s v-shaped rally, which saw bullion futures...
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One Indicator Not So Ominous

September 25 2006
Technical signs that a major top is in continue to accumulate, some of them ominously coincident with the autumn equinox and yesterday’s solar eclipse. On the S&P chart, MACD and relative strength indicators are flashing red, and support for Dow stocks is breaking down at the 10-day moving average....
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A Silent Crash In Home Prices

September 22 2006
With Bay Area homes sales hitting nine-year lows, there’s at least one economist who knows a bust when he sees one: “The market is flat and the bubble has popped,” said Chris Thornberg. And while some in the real estate business may have been encouraged by yesterday’s decision by the Fed to leave administered rates unchanged, Thornberg sees a problem that has been growing far...
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Who'll Be Next Professor Fisher?

September 21 2006
Let the Dow Industrial Average get within a hundred points of new record highs, as it did yesterday, and America’s economic troubles seem to melt like lemon drops. “I think this market action is telling us that the economy may be past its worst point,” Wells Capital’s James Paulsen told the Wall Street Journal, evidently inspired by yesterday’s 72-point gain in the blue chip...
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Downside Targets For Silver & Gold

September 20 2006
Gold stocks got pounded once again yesterday, buttressing an earlier forecast here of a further decline in December Gold futures to at least $513. We’ll continue to fish for a bottom in selected stocks as gold falls, since this can nearly always be done without risking much more than small change; however, I have my doubts that any significant turn will occur before the target is...
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Construction Man Sees No Bust Yet

September 19 2006
If the stock market is about to get short-squeezed to new record highs, a possibility I raised here the other day, what would be the catalyst? A plausible answer can be glimpsed in the very interesting letter that I received recently from a...
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Is Dow Staging For Moon Shot?

September 18 2006
Considering the viciousness of the short-squeeze on September put options that bears just endured, we might well ask what lies in store for us in October? Logic suggests that if the pessimists were willing to bet heavily on a September crash, as they evidently were, then they will be betting even more aggressively on a crash in October, historically the worst month for...
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Turning Point For Newmont?

September 15 2006
Here’s some trading-floor wisdom that could suit us well as we continue to fish for a bottom in gold: When attempting to catch a falling piano, one should always wait until it has bounced three times.  Or so the saying goes.  Yesterday, however, we threw caution to the wind, opening our arms...
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Has WSJ Gone Off Deep End?

September 14 2006
The Wall Street Journal’s respectability is fading fast. Consider this story, from yesterday’s front page: “Fashion Dictates // Well-Dressed Men // Will Show More Leg,” in which a Journal reporter labored to convince us, with barely a trace of the usual Column Four irony, that “Shorts With Sports Coats Are a Trend That’s Back.”  Maybe on...
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An Algorithmic Frankenstein...

September 13 2006
Judging from the way stocks have been getting short-squeezed this week, traders must have been loaded to the gills with September put options. My technically savvy friend Tom Tankka pointed this out to me, along with the sad observation that our mutual friends from the trading world have been dropping like flies, so very challenging is the current investment environment. It is at...
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The Jersey Shore

September 12 2006
What amazed me most during my recent visit to the Jersey Shore was that a house in Longport, easily the most boring town in America for any kid who grew up there, had just changed hands for $7 million. I don’t know who the buyer was, but it would not likely have been a “local,” since anyone who grew up in or near Longport, as I did, would never have paid such an exorbitant sum for...
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Hard-Core Bear: 'No Depression'

September 11 2006
Is the Second Great Depression on its way? Not according to Bob Bronson, whose downbeat quantitative forecasts have been featured here often. Bob predicted the current housing bust fully two years earlier than most of his colleagues, and I don’t mean to suggest that he was premature. In fact, using rigorous analysis, Bronson Capital Markets Research saw a topping pattern in real...
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Small Dip Could Dim Gold Outlook

September 08 2006
Several subscribers who dropped by the Rick’s Picks chat room yesterday morning were looking for a promising spot to buy gold,...
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Katie's Big Belly Flop

September 07 2006
After a drum roll that lasted practically the entire summer, Katie Couric finally took her flying leap last night, belly flopping with such a spectacular splash that only those who wish her ill could have sat through the whole, jaw-droppingly bad show from beginning to end. What could the brass at CBS have been thinking when they decided,...
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Katie's Big Belly Flop

September 06 2006
After a drum roll that lasted practically the entire summer, Katie Couric finally took her flying leap last night, effecting a belly flop so spectacular that only those who wish her ill could have sat through the whole, jaw-droppingly bad show from beginning to end. What could the brass at CBS have been thinking when they decided, apparently, to promote this as the biggest TV...
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Soon, the Rush To Thanksgiving

September 05 2006
  Summer in Colorado has passed with alarming speed, slowed hardly at all by a recent family trip to...
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A Pickoff Play In Natural Gas

September 01 2006
Natural gas quotes have fallen relentlessly, to as low as 5.39,  since peaking last December near $16. Under the circumstances, it seemed like a good time to try bottom-fishing in the October futures, especially since seasonal factors for this commodity are now bullish. The trade worked out nicely for anyone who used a stop wider than a...
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Is the Market Unshortable?

August 31 2006
I tried lowering the bar yesterday to see if it might help buyers meet our very modest rally expectations, but even that didn’t work. We were looking for the Mini-S&P to choke, wheeze, gasp or otherwise struggle its way up to 1309,00,  a Hidden Pivot that promised to reward shorts with a quick payoff and relatively little risk. It...
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Is the Market Unshortable?

August 30 2006
I tried lowering the bar yesterday to see if it might help buyers meet our very modest rally expectations, but even that didn’t work. We were looking for the Mini-S&P to choke, wheeze, gasp or otherwise struggle its way up to 1309,00,  a Hidden Pivot that promised to reward shorts with a quick payoff and relatively little risk. It...
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A Pregnant Pause Keeps 'Em Buying

August 30 2006
The market shrugged off some atrocious consumer sentiment numbers on Tuesday, obsessing instead on tea leaves that would seem to imply that the Fed might not do anything more with interest rates -- at least, quite possibly, not for a while. Just the kind of thing to get Wall Street’s juices flowing these days, albeit lacking sufficient hydraulic pressure to...
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And Speaking Of Easy Money...

August 29 2006
The newly opened Rick’s Picks chat room is proving useful to market-watchers and swing-traders, eliciting some important targets...
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Nostalgic for Easy Money

August 28 2006
I’ve been around professional traders for nearly thirty years, but I can’t recall ever hearing a one of them remark that it was particularly easy to make money at the time. It is only in retrospect that we wax nostalgic over the relative felicitousness of the markets at various times in the past. There was 1974, for instance, a year after listed options began to trade on the...
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Hard Logic Refutes Another Inflationist

August 25 2006
Although I had grown weary of explaining why deflation is the only possible outcome for our mortally sick economy, a chat group that I monitor drew me into an argument with someone who sees only the possibilty of inflation. The crux of his case is that, even though deflationary catalysts such as an incipient real estate recession are present, “the government has already planted...
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Housing 'Volatility' Too Rosy a Forecast

August 24 2006
“Housing Prices May Become More Volatile”. Where do they dig these stories up? The headline, lifted from the latest edition of The Wall Street Journal, is a real classic of the genre in the Sugar-Coated News category. We infer from the word “volatile” that in the years to come, home prices can be expected to both rise and fall at least...
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Child Molester As Comic Relief

August 23 2006
The news media have done themselves proud with their non-stop coverage of JonBenet-murderer wannabe,  John Mark Karr. Of course, practically everyone in America knew within hours of when the story first broke that it was bogus. Karr’s confession began to leak air when his estranged wife said he was home in Georgia when the murder took...
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'Dreaded Day' Has Arrived

August 22 2006
August 22 has been widely advertised as a date to be feared on the Islamic calendar. It corresponds to the 27th day of the month of Rajab, when the prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven on the winged horse Buraq. Would Islamic terrorists attempt to commemorate such an occasion with a spectacular attack on the West? Let’s hope not. But it may be comforting...
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Deflation Monster Enters on Tiptoes

August 21 2006
The U.S. economy continues to edge toward recession, although you’d never know it from the way the stock market has been acting. Shares finished the week moderately higher on Friday, up for a fifth straight day on a flurry of reports...
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Great Time Not To Buy a Home

August 17 2006
Can you spot the glimmer of wishful thinking in the following headline, culled from the San Francisco Chronicle? Here it is, just as it appeared in Wednesday’s editions above the fold, front page: “Home sales fall as prices flatten //...
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Important Top Due in Weeks?

August 16 2006
My technically savvy friend Garrett Jones thinks a pullback in gold later this month could provide the last good buying opportunity in quite a while. He also sees a potentially important turning point for stocks if they continue to rise into the beginning of September. That would coincide with the end of a four-year cycle that we usually associate with important lows. This time, however,...
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Low Volatility Ripe for a Buy?

August 15 2006
Mark Klizas is a trader, a seasoned technician and former colleague of mine from the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange. Below, he shares some observations concerning the Volatility Index (VIX) that could open the door for us as traders. Mark thinks volatility is a buy at these levels, and here’s...
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Larry King, Thanks For Taking My Call

August 14 2006
I spent Friday in transit, catching the news at-at-a-glance in airport lounges between Denver and San Francisco. Anticipating long security lines at DIA, I got to the airport nearly three hours before my...
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Life Goes On...

August 11 2006
Battle-hardened contrarians would have had a field day on Thursday, what with stocks rallying, and oil and gold prices plummeting on a day when the world probably should have been frozen with fear. As it happened, fear of the visceral kind was almost nowhere to be found, at least not on the network news. At first glance, it would appear the terrorists not only failed to blow up...
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Stocks Fell Because...

August 10 2006
The stock market appeared, finally, to have taken notice yesterday of world events. Or did it? The Dow Industrials fell nearly 100 points, prompted, according to some observers, by news that Israel’s ground war in Lebanon had entered a new and greatly expanded phase. “Startling developments!” was how Fox sold this breaking story. But if the markets were truly rattled by it, then...
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Making Book On Armageddon

August 09 2006
My friend Chuck traded pork bellies for a while on the Merc, until the day he showed up in the pits tripping on LSD. He claims to have made money that day, but not before drug-induced flights of fantasy led him to think long and hard about the slaughterhouses that would actually take delivery on hog contracts he was buying and selling with the wave of the hand. By day’s end he’d...
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No Time to Be Contrarian Hero

August 08 2006
Sellers were even meeker than usual yesterday, wary of  setting themselves up for a goosing ahead of  today’s Fed announcement. Futures markets were indicating a more-than-80 percent probability that the central bank won’t raise administered rates above their current 5.25%. If so, it would mark...
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Sleazeballs Rout Bulls and Bears

August 07 2006
Stocks finished slightly lower on Friday, a fact that could have satisfied neither bulls nor bears. Although each had a chance to carry the day, in the end only the canniest of opportunists could have come out ahead. Da Boyz raped buyers on the opening simply by stepping aside for the first fifteen minutes or so, letting stocks waft into bull-trap territory. Panicky shorts did all...
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Buyers Mock Wall of Worry

August 04 2006
Have stocks ever climbed a wall of worry so ostentatiously as they are climbing one now? Not that I can recall. With Iran threatening to goose oil prices to $200, all-out civil war erupting in Iraq, and Lebanon offering in microcosm all of the elements of a possible Third World War, investors somehow found ample reason yesterday to push the Dow Industrial Average 42 points higher....
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Money Karma

August 03 2006
I’ve always had quite a knack for finding parking spaces, even in neighborhoods where there’s a big event going on. If I’m cruising around in search of a space, the steering wheel seems to tug subtly to the left or right, guiding me onto whichever side street will have room for just one more car. Not to sound ungrateful, but there are times when I wish that I could transmute my...
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Free Chat Room For You Traders

August 02 2006
Rick’s Picks will soon offer a real-time trading chat room to...
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'For Sale' Signs Will Start Crash

August 01 2006
A silent crash is taking shape in the real estate sector, evinced by the growing number of “for sale” signs popping up on lawns across the U.S.  Even the staid New York Times has noticed, as this front-page headline in weekend editions attests:...
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Hold Your Nose And Stay Short!

July 31 2006
So, what do you do when you are short a market that stinks to high heaven but continues to move against you? In this case, as I explain in greater detail in the current edition of Rick’s...
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Iran, Hezbollah And The Bomb

July 27 2006
To understand how high the stakes are in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah, I’d suggest reading this analysis, published in the London Sunday Times:  “God’s...
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Stocks Extend Mini-Rampage

July 26 2006
Here’s a Wall Street Journal item from Tuesday that nicely encapsulates the current insanity: “Existing-home sales fell 1.3% in June and the inventory of unsold homes reached a new record, in further signs of a slowing housing market. However, a gauge of consumer confidence unexpectedly swung...
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No Blaming Ben For Latest Spree

July 25 2006
There’s no blaming Helicopter Ben for yesterday’s outbreak of irrational exuberance, but if not him, who? For perspective, recall the prediction made here in late May – that it would be a do-nothing summer for the stock market, with the Dow Industrials fluctuating meaninglessly between 10600 and 11200 until after Labor Day.  If you look...
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Shorting Papa Bear

July 24 2006
The stock market would be collapsing right now were it not for short-squeezes triggered by our intermittently dovish Fed chairman. However, it should be painfully clear after last week’s histrionics that each successive goosing of share prices is attracting fewer suckers. Indeed, when the Dow Industrials surged 212 points last Wednesday, inspired by Helicopter Ben’s most recent,...
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Stocks Love This War...

July 21 2006
War is good for stocks, as some old-timers like to remind us, so perhaps all that’s needed to push the Dow to new record highs is more Iraqs, Lebanons, Gazas  and Afghanistans? One could even imagine that a mushroom cloud in some already blighted corner of the world would be just the thing to send blue chip shares hurtling toward the...
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More Commentary Later Today

July 21 2006
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More Commentary Later Today

July 21 2006
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Stocks Love This War...

July 20 2006
War is good for stocks, as some old-timers like to remind us, so perhaps all that’s needed to push the Dow to new record highs is more Iraqs, Lebanons, Gazas  and Afghanistans? One could even imagine that a mushroom cloud in some already blighted corner of the world would be just the thing to send blue chip shares hurtling toward the...
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Suckers Buy Mideast Lull

July 19 2006
I got distracted after lunch yesterday and was somewhat surprised to see, in calling up some charts after the close, that stocks had gone all silly in the final two hours. My first reaction to the 116-point rally was to check a Google news page to see if world peace had perhaps broken out while I was on the phone. No such thing. In fact, Hezbollah was sticking to its guns,...
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Bulls Headed Toward a Cliff

July 18 2006
I’m once again baffled as to why any significant buying of stocks should have occurred yesterday, but it is a matter of record that the Dow did indeed rise eight points on the day. Perhaps investors have deluded themselves into believing, as someone in a chat group I monitor wrote, that it’s “just a regional conflict” with no serious implications for the world’s financial and...
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Stocks, Bonds Just a Sideshow

July 17 2006
Hezbollah’s vow of “open war” on Israel in retaliation for the attempted killing of its leader is all but certain to escalate the Middle East crisis, roiling the world’s financial markets even more in the days and weeks ahead. Stocks and bonds seem almost like a side show at the moment, since it is the steady rise in the price of oil that will...
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Who Were The Buyers?

July 14 2006
Stay down, you dumb sonofabitch! That’s what we felt like yelling every time the market tried to rally yesterday. With a regional firestorm threatening to erupt in the Middle East, a sane investor might have wondered why anyone would have bought stocks at all. Still, someone evidently did as shares staggered, wheezed, stumbled and tumbled their way lower, never mounting much of a...
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One More Leg Down?

July 13 2006
Da Boyz sandbagged the rubes who bought yesterday’s opening. Buying dried up after about ten minutes, then it was down, down, down for the rest of the day. I’d left you with an order to buy August DIA calls that got filled suspiciously easily, but instead of blowing them out when the market began to tank, we turned the position into a strangle by buying some August puts. This...
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No Cheerleading To Buoy Goldbugs

July 12 2006
One thing I’ve always promised my gold-bug subscribers is that I would avoid serving up hope by the dollop whenever gold was in the doldrums, as it surely is now. My guiding principle is that subscribers will be better served by rigidly objective technical analysis, even when the charts have little to say, than by forecasts buttressed by constant cheerleading. As you know, my long-term...
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Real Estate View From California

July 11 2006
“There is no housing bubble!” That would be no mere permabull talking, but rather a delusional, frothing-at-the-mouth, head-buried-in-the-sand, deny-it-unto-death permabull. One clinical notch below these nut-jobs are the ones who recognize that a housing bubble exists but think any danger it could pose to the U.S. economy would be limited to areas where real estate prices went...
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Hot Air A-Plenty

July 10 2006
I’m in Steamboat Springs with my family, enjoying a hot air balloon “rodeo” that has attracted scores of enthusiasts from all over the country.