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Heating Bill A Real Shocker

December 13 2005
My latest heating bill didn’t include the recent cold snap here in Colorado, but even without it, the bill was 50% higher than any I’ve ever paid before. So much for the hundred bucks a month I was just starting to save on my monthly phone bill by...
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The $250M Hiccup

December 12 2005
If you’ve ever looked at the keyboard of a cash register at McDonald’s, you know that it has been designed to be idiot-proof, as unchallenging to a cashier’s mental abilities as counting one’s toes. In fact, the entire fulfillment chain at Mickey D’s, from order-taking, to french-frying, to mustard-dabbing  and napkin-dispensing, has been so well thought...
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A True Believer Champions Gold

December 09 2005
I have quite a few pen-pals who are ardent goldbugs – true believers who disdain the more subtle arguments that occasionally play out in this forum. Chuck Cohen is one such fanatic, an erstwhile Rick’s Picks lurker whose unqualified, well-reasoned enthusiasm for precious metals and mining shares sometimes makes me feel ashamed to have entertained even mild...
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Trojan Horse At GM's Door

December 08 2005
What the heck could GM investors be thinking? A surge in the stock late yesterday cut the DJIA’s losses nearly in half, but you’d have to be a cynic to believe the celebration was warranted. The news that caused GM shares to rise 2.9 percent in mere minutes concerned the growing likelihood that Kirk Kerkorian, a 9.9% stakeholder, will get a seat on GM’s board. Kerkorian’s hatchet-man, Jerome York,...
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Under Pressure, Dow Slogs Higher

December 07 2005
The DJIA remains locked on 11000, and if it should fail to push above that number by year’s end – well, there’s no point even thinking about it, since the odds of failure are by now so remote that only a collision between Earth and a huge asteroid could conceivably deter investors from doing the requisite lifting between now and New Year’s Eve. For sure, they did their bit yesterday, keeping the Dow...
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Is OPEC Tiptoeing Into Gold Bullion?

December 06 2005
Comex gold has been making short work of my hidden pivots, and not just the little ones either. There was an important hidden resistance at $500.00 that “should have” slowed the rally down; instead, it exhibited about as much stopping power as the Orleans...
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Market on Cruise Till Bonus Time

December 05 2005
I’ve reproduced hourly charts below of the mini-contracts that we trade more or less regularly. A pessimist would probably notice first that the most important indexes – i.e., the Dow Industrials (YM) and the S&P 500 (ES) -- are lagging behind the Russell 2000 (ER) and the Naz. But you could spin it another way, too – that if GM and Honeywell had not been dragging the blue chip average down on...
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Puts Are Cheaper Than Bass-Fishing

December 02 2005
A Dow thrust above 11000 seems like a foregone conclusion, but even so, it’ll be tempting to try and impede it with some shorts if and when the big day arrives. We’ve taken a cautious approach so far whenever bucking the bullish tide, buying a few puts here, a few puts there, as certain favored trading vehicles approached promising hidden-pivot targets. Looking back at the stock market over the last...
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Deranged Bull About to Cool?

December 01 2005
I don’t usually pay much heed to conventional trendlines, since they are too well watched to be trader-friendly, but the one governing the S&P 500 Index shown below is pretty compelling. It connects five tops going back nearly two years, including one made just two days ago at 1270.64. Was there by any chance a hidden pivot close by? Turns out there was – at 1275.07. The nearly five-point...
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Cliff Looms For $ Bears

November 30 2005
With gold hovering near $500 an ounce, the barbaric relic is finally getting some attention -- from the Wall Street Journal, for one, in the form of a bylined article, “Gold Flirts With $500,” that hit the Dow Jones newswire on Tuesday afternoon. Be patient, dear gold bugs, since it could be another year or two before the likes of Newmont and Barrick make the cover of...
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First-Hand Memories Of Economic Turmoil

November 29 2005
I spent many hours over Thanksgiving weekend responding to a huge backlog of e-mail messages, many of which concerned our favorite topic, deflation. Below are a few such letters that I thought you might find interesting. I will publish the remaining letters tomorrow (Wednesday). First up is Kahlif David, responding to my theory that someday we could...
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Dot-Com Mania's Final Hurrah?

November 28 2005
Google blew past my hidden-pivot target at 418.58, implying the stock will reach a minimum 439.05 before it can peak. We had an order in to buy some December 400 puts, but only at bargain prices. In fact, we bought none, since put options in Google picked up volatility as the stock moved higher on Wednesday. This suggests that the market makers are not exactly wild about shorting GOOG puts as...
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Dot-Com Mania's Final Hurrah?

November 25 2005
Google blew past my hidden-pivot target at 418.58, implying the stock will reach a minimum 439.05 before it can peak. We had an order in to buy some December 400 puts, but only at bargain prices. In fact, we bought none, since put options in Google picked up volatility as the stock moved higher on Wednesday. This suggests that the market makers are not exactly wild about shorting GOOG puts as...
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The Easiest Way To Short Google

November 23 2005
Google, up 9 points on Monday, is within striking distance of a potentially important hidden-pivot target at 418.58. The stock shredded its way higher after faking out bulls with a gap-down opening. It took about 20 minutes for this hoax to play out, coaxing shares from panicky sellers two points below the previous day’s close before trampolining into the wild blue yonder. There...
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The Easiest Way To Short Google

November 22 2005
Google, up 9 points in the last six hours, is within striking distance of a potentially important hidden-pivot target at 418.58. The stock shredded its way higher yesterday after faking out bulls with a gap-down opening. It took about 20 minutes for this hoax to play out, coaxing shares from panicky sellers two points below the previous day’s close before trampolining into the wild blue yonder....
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The Market That Would Not Tank

November 21 2005
The Market That Would Not Tank turned a promising dive into a swoon Friday, but not before letting us get short on the high tick of the day. We had an offer in to sell two E-Mini S&P contracts short at 1252.25, precisely where the index peaked early in the session. We covered half the position six...
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An Old-School Newsman Dies

November 18 2005
I just received word of the death of my old boss, Charles C. “Chuck” Reynolds, former editor-in-chief of The Atlantic City Press. Chuck hired me in 1971, a week after I graduated from college, and I spent the next seven years learning the craft of journalism before migrating to the trading pits of the PSE. This was before Woodward and Bernstein,...
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Titillating Times

November 17 2005
Danger, or opportunity? The S&P chart below titillates us with plenty both. We see a rally that has spent the last month in coil-and-lunge mode, fitfully making its way toward the year’s earlier peaks. Having surpassed one of them already – the 1233 high...
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Sleepwalking

November 16 2005
Yesterday’s forecast nailed the exact low in the Yen – 0.8411, basis December – offering us an exhilarating ride and a profitable (i.e., $475 per contract) exit shortly thereafter. The intraday high was 0.8458, but I can’t predict whether there is significantly more upside to come. If so, corresponding weakness in the dollar could be expected to lend buoyancy to gold quotes, which so far have...
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Now It's Black Helicopter Ben

November 15 2005
Now Helicopter Ben’s been spotted at the controls of a black helicopter. Conspiracy theories abound concerning the Fed’s recent decision to stop publishing M3 data. Some fear this will give Alan Greenspan’s successor more room to manipulate monetary policy surreptitiously. There’s a more plausible explanation, though – one that is about as intriguing as the Boy Scout Handbook. Very simply, M3 growth...
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Petites Tetons Loom for Bulls

November 14 2005
Stock averages wafted into the rafters Friday, setting the stage for an attempt over the next week or two to lift the roof on this year’s constipated range. For the S&P 500 Index, that would require a move above the 1245.86 high recorded in early August. That’s almost exactly 4% above current levels, and one could expect the financial press to rain fireworks and confetti on Wall Street if and...
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Doing the 'Fly

November 11 2005
That was quite a turnaround yesterday, eh? Google, for one, ripped for a $14 gain following a weak opening, finally closing within 25 cents of the intraday high. We’d hoped to get aboard at a swing low, but had expected it to take a few more days for the stock to find traction. In fact, the entire, savage correction lasted all of two days, terminating abruptly in the opening minutes of Thursday’s...
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Why $509.25 Is Crucial for Gold

November 10 2005
We’ve had excellent success recently using hidden pivots to predict important swing points for gold, which is now inches from a bullish breakout. Recall that on October 12, the Comex December contract peaked at 483.10, a single tick above the $483.00 target that had been projected here several weeks earlier near $467. The subsequent decline from $483.10 was nasty, hitting a low of $456.10 on...
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Surrender Monkeys Keep Their Cool

November 09 2005
Say one thing for those cheese-eating surrender monkeys, they can keep their cool. Take a look at the chart of the CAC 40 Index below. With blood flowing in the streets and flames devouring police cars and public buildings by the score, lapping at the gargoyles, French stocks have rallied almost as though nurtured by the riots. In the past, we’ve seen the Dow Industrials and...
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What If Google Bought Microsoft?

November 08 2005
Google is closing fast on a $407 target (or $418 if any higher) we’ve had in our sights for a while. The stock is not so much a proxy for the market as a nose cone, but we follow it closely nonetheless because of its power to inspire the downtrodden investor. Not long ago, when GOOG shares were trading around $335, I was feeling inspired myself – to short the stock, as some of you may recall. Of...
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Dollar Bulls Rare as Dodo

November 07 2005
The “strong-dollar guy.” That’s not how I want to be remembered, although it surely couldn’t hurt if my loyal subscribers would talk up this point to friends and acquaintances who might be shopping for a guru with a very different slant on the economy. Regarding the curiously strong dollar, I like...
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Bulls Munch Into Supply

November 04 2005
Yesterday’s strength in the indexes had been telegraphed a day earlier, when the S&P futures pushed above a hidden-pivot resistance I’d flagged at 1215.00. This allowed us to jump aboard overnight, using another “invisible” trigger point at 1218.25. Ordinarily we try to initiate trades at swing points where intraday trends begin. However, the market has been too coy lately to make this an...
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Mining Sector's Dirty Dozen?

November 03 2005
Of the many questions that I fielded during yesterday’s real-time Q&A session, no fewer than seven concerned gold stocks. Clearly, interest in the miners is on the rebound among Rick’s Picks subscribers. Not coincidentally, we’ve been in there bidding for a piece of the action the last two days. So far,...
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Gold Looks Right For Bottom-Fishing

November 02 2005
Gold is starting to look attractive again. We’ve been waiting for a buying opportunity since mid-October. That’s when the Comex December contract touched 483.10, a single tick above an important hidden-pivot target at 483.00 that I’d flagged several weeks earlier. Here’s what I wrote at the time, on September 28: Upside...
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Time Running Out For Seasonal Bears

November 01 2005
As trick-or-treaters make their annual rounds Monday night, we should be reminded that bulls will have seasonality on their side into year’s end. As some old-timers may recall, Christmas shopping used to commence officially the day after Thanksgiving,. These days, though, retailers at the local mall will be revved up to the redline by the time Turkey Day rolls around. The stock market may be off to...
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9 Tons of Gold In His Mattress

October 31 2005
Interesting times continue to drive the market every which way but loose. Rallies go to resistance, declines to support -- more feverishly so in recent weeks, seemingly, than many of us can recall. One of these days a trend is going to exceed our tired expectations, then reverse with a unanimous consensus leaning the wrong way. Friday’s little frisson was...
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Gold and Deflation: Readers Weigh In

October 28 2005
Deflation has never occurred on a global scale, nor in a financial environment such as currently exists – one in which fundamentally worthless currencies serve not only as legal tender, but as the world’s chief store of value. Under the circumstances, the prospect of deflation raises some tricky questions for gold bugs, most of whom were attracted to bullion because of their deep distrust of paper...
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Do We Grow Fat Just to Be Eaten?

October 27 2005
With “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke slated to take charge of the Fed next year, I raised the question here yesterday of who’s interests he will serve. Those of big business? Of the U.S. Government? The Federal Resereve’s member...
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Bernanke Faces Trial by Ordeal

October 26 2005
If the appointment of “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke as Fed chairman portends a major change in monetary policy, it will most likely come in the form of a shift from fighting INflation to guarding against DEflation. Recall that Bernanke burst onto the financial scene two years ago with a provocative speech to the National Economist Club that made clear the central bank’s resolve to fight deflation by any...
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Bottom-Fishing In December Oil

October 25 2005
December Crude fell yesterday to a hidden-pivot target at 59.43 first broached here two weeks ago, allowing us to get long with the very tight (i.e., 59.18) stop-loss that had been suggested. The actual low was 59.31, but it’s too early to tell whether it will mark a major turning point. I had raised that possibility last week in response to apparent consensus expectations that oil prices have...
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Living to 100

October 24 2005
I had planned to continue our dialogue today concerning deflation, but the mood eludes me at the moment. The weekend was a joyous one for my family, which had gathered here in Boulder for the bar mitzvah of my son,...
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Readers Braced For Tough Times

October 21 2005
Last week’s dialogue concerning deflation and the impending hard times produced quite a pile of interesting mail. The discussion resumes today with several more fascinating letters from...
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Falling Oil Prices Spur Stock Bulls

October 20 2005
Wall Street shrugged off losses at GM, Honeywell and Intel to focus on the good news -- a $1.00 drop in the price of crude. The Dow Industrials were up nearly 129 points at the close, having rallied from a moderate deficit in the opening hour. If the ratio between blue chip stocks and oil quotes holds, a decline in spot crude to $51 might be expected to propel the Dow to new all-time highs. Of...
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Iraqi Vote Offers A Taste of Chicago

October 19 2005
It’s starting to sound like the constitutional referendum in Iraq last weekend was run by a bunch of Chicago ward-heelers rather than by a fledgling committee of Muslim and Kurdish locals. In some...
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Nascent Bull, Or Bear Ruse?

October 18 2005
Hard to know why stocks were so feisty yesterday. Perhaps it was the world-shaking news from the Hollywood – that a new actor has been chosen to play James Bond (a blond (!!!), the “news” media breathlessly informed us), and that Stallone is gearing up for...
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Hey, You Lurkers: See for Yourselves

October 17 2005
A while back, I promised you that I would never become a cheerleader for gold – that  I would simply call ‘em as I see ‘em. The ranks of guru-dom are already far too crowded with hucksters who never stop blathering about a supposedly imminent bullion moon-shot to $1,000-plus an ounce. These are the same guys who tell us, every time the price of gold...
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Why Monetization Is Not the Answer

October 15 2005
I’ve covered the markets and specific securities on the paid-subscriber pages, providing some key supports for crude oil as well as guidance for the short positions we hold in Citi and the Diamonds. In today’s commentary, I’d like to continue our dialogue on deflation by responding to some of your letters. The first is from...
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Why Monetization Is Not the Answer

October 13 2005
I’ve covered the markets and specific securities on the paid-subscriber pages, providing some key supports for crude oil as well as guidance for the short positions we hold in Citi and the Diamonds. In today’s commentary, I’d like to continue our dialogue on deflation by responding to some of your letters. The first is from...
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Whiskey, or Gold?

October 12 2005
Judging from the mail I’ve received recently, some of you are not taking my deflation warning lightly. Of course, to mainstream commentators, we’re just lunatics. But let me say it again: Deflation is unavoidable. And hey, don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger. I’ll be publishing your letters on this topic over the next few days, and there are some...
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High Fuel Costs Painless for Citi

October 11 2005
The Citi puts we hold will give us some positive exposure if stocks take a dive between now and December. Anything below $40 a share would be worth $1,800 a point to us, so we’ve got pretty decent leverage. And it doesn’t hurt that earlier profit-taking has reduced our cost basis on these puts to just 27 cents apiece. ...
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Deflation's Revenge On Illusory Wealth

October 10 2005
Deflation is the unknown that scares gold bugs the most. The typical hoarder of gold is contemptuous of paper assets in general and of fiat currency in particular. He is hostile toward the very idea of central banking, convinced that the bankers, by pushing easy credit, have brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse. And he believes, most fervently of all, that only a hoard of...
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If System Collapses, Who'll Bid Up Gold?

October 07 2005
I’ve been a dollar bull for quite some time, a position that puts me sharply at odds with the likes of Buffett and Soros.  Of course, anyone who owes lots of dollars – mortgagors, to name just one class of debtors – should be rooting for these guys, since a dollar cheapened by inflation would effectively reduce the burden of debt for all of us. And extreme...
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Fannie's Weight Could Sink Stocks

October 06 2005
With Citi evidently in the grip of lunatics – the stock was down a whopping seven cents yesterday, even as most other banking shares got savaged – we’ll shift our attention to Fannie Mae, a bellwether whose price action is perhaps more in tune with reality. Fannie’s dead-cat bounce looks to have run its course, and the stock should now be presumed bound for a hidden-pivot support at 37.60 that I...
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Winter Shortfall: $5,500 Per Home

October 04 2005
The blow to our consumer economy is already being felt at the retail level, as I implied here yesterday. How much worse might things get? My friend Doug at Merrill Lynch calculates that, compared to last winter, the average household will face an increase in non-discretionary spending of at least $700 per month, or $3,500 for the five-month...
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Economic Plunge Is in the Pipeline

October 03 2005
Friday’s S&P range was the sixth lowest in the last two years, in case you’re keeping track. Of course, it must have seemed even duller to market watchers who have been patiently awaiting an October crash. And not without good reason. Stocks may have shrugged off Katrina and Rita, and even the prospect of Fannie Mae’s directors being hauled into court, but there are a few wall-of-worry items...
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Fannie's Swoon Barely Registers

September 30 2005
Far shrewder observers than I are already characterizing the developing Fannie Mae saga as Enron/Worldcom writ large. “The biggest Ponzi scheme in world financial history” is how one regular in a chat room I frequent -- a money manager who oversees mega-billions -- sees it. For starters, think of all the little people who for decades have been buying Fannie...
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Should We Heed Hindenburg Alert?

September 29 2005
The market continued to inhale and exhale yesterday. Pondering the alternatives, perhaps we should be thankful. From a hidden-pivot standpoint it was a case of rallies falling short of their modest targets and declines doing more or less the same. I had some bids in below the market in several of the mini-indexes, but sellers lacked whatever conviction it might have taken to get them filled....
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Lake-Surfing

September 26 2005
I’d suggested keeping your Bulletin Launchers open Friday in case an opportunity popped up, but we certainly didn’t get much to work with. The day’s highlight was a soporific ride aboard the Mini-S&P in the early afternoon. The rally allowed us to exit on a trailing stop 20 minutes later with a 2.25-point gain, or about $100 after commissions. Lunch money if you live in...
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Ebullience? Or Just A Routine Bounce...

September 23 2005
Buyers tipped their hand early yesterday when homebuilders and bank stocks refused to fall on an otherwise weak opening. In fact, two of our faves, Beazer and D.R. Horton, were actually showing gains with the Dow Industrials off nearly 30 points in the early going. We’ve always paid close attention to Citi in particular, since, as far as I’m, concerned, it’s a perfect proxy for a...
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Signposts

September 22 2005
December Gold spiked to 476.20 yesterday, just a hair shy of the 476.50 hidden pivot we’ve been using as a minimum rally target. Once above the pivot the futures would become be an odds-on bet to reach the next at 483.00, an impediment that looks sufficiently daunting to warrant shorting, albeit with a very tight stop-loss. Assuming a tradable pullback occurs from that number, we would expect the...
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As Citi Goes...

September 21 2005
Citigroup may be the perfect proxy for an economy that has been running on smoke and mirrors, and it therefore behooves us to pay close attention when the stock reverses sharply, as it did yesterday -- especially when the reversal comes precisely at a hidden pivot, as indeed it did. Citi shares have been in a short-squeeze since late August, with only a couple of minor corrections along the way. The...
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Key Numbers For Gold Bugs

September 20 2005
Gold peaked early in yesterday’s session, but not before making a 17-year high that will have very bullish implications going forward. The actual top occurred at 472.40, less than a dollar from the hidden-pivot resistance at 473.20 that I’d identified a while back as a minimum rally target. The pivot could still show a little stopping power later this week, but judging from the way the futures...
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Market Climbs Wall of Hubris

September 19 2005
This market creeps me out, really. It’s one thing for stocks to climb a wall of worry, but quite another for them to dance a jig every time the major averages advance a foot or two on some fresh shard of appalling news from Iraq or New Orleans. Bad news is good news these days, in case you hadn’t noticed, and as far as Wall Street is concerned, the disaster in...
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Time to Short Google Shares?

September 16 2005
Is it time to short Google? This is a question that pops up frequently in my mail, and although the short-term answer may be “yes,” the longer-term outlook should temper our enthusiasm for betting against the Web’s reigning searchmeister.  The company is pursuing a course that will put it increasingly in competition with Microsoft, and although it could...
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Trashed Pivots Spell Trouble

September 15 2005
I don’t like the way the averages trashed a couple of  hidden pivots supports yesterday, not at all, and I said so in an intraday bulletin. We had bids in below the market in two trading vehicles, the Mini-Russell and the Mini-Dow. The latter fell to 10630 in the first two hours of the session, just a single tick above the 10631 hidden-pivot target I’d...
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Turn On, Tune In...

September 14 2005
Although Rick’s Picks  is not explicitly geared to day trading, I’ll occasionally send out updates and recommendations in...
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Timing Trades So They Work

September 13 2005
We offered the E-Mini Nasdaq short at 1615.00 yesterday, and although that hidden pivot offered daunting resistance throughout the day, we ended the session with no position. A case of cold feet? Definitely not. I’m as eager to short the market at these levels as you are, but only if we are able to initiate a position on our terms. On Monday, I’d specified that the short offer be left in until 10:30...
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Living in These Interesting Times

September 12 2005
Interesting times beget interesting e-mail, of course, and last week’s torrent of messages and attachments commenting on these all-too-interesting times could take me a month of Sundays to get through. I can only hope that next week is wholly uninteresting, eerie is that might seem, lest I get even further behind in my reading. A week of profound eventlessness wouldn’t be so bad for humanity,...
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'OPM' Breeds Complacency

September 09 2005
My comments will be brief today, since I’ll be on my way shortly to Denver for a talk on Hidden Pivots before the Denver Trading Group. The major indexes stalled once again at the modest rally targets I’d flagged for Wednesday. As a result, the short offers...
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Obsessing Over Puts

September 08 2005
We had some short offers in somewhat above the market yesterday, but the intraday rallies were too feeble to reach even these modest targets. Nor did it prove particularly helpful to have gotten the targets precisely right, as the nearly untradeable price action in the mini-S&P demonstrated. After the futures exceeded the previous day’s target, 1232.50, by a single tick, we shifted our...
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Buggering The Consensus

September 07 2005
The stock market continues to act as though the U.S. economy will finesse the awesome destruction caused by Katrina as easily as it might a month-long drought in the Corn Belt. Bulls evidently are confident the hurricane will have earned...
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It's Different This Time...

September 06 2005
How will New Orleans and the Gulf states ever clean up the mess and rebuild, especially if the hurricane season throws yet another nasty punch as has been predicted? My...
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Why the Dollar Will Strengthen

September 02 2005
Gold surged $9 on Thursday, with the dollar weakening on doubts about how well the U.S. will cope with soaring energy prices. Perhaps the newly emboldened dollar bears should be asking themselves what will happen if the...
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Bulls Unfazed By $4 Gas

September 01 2005
Investors evidently found a firm new toehold in the wall of worry yesterday, this time in the form of a prediction by the Oil Price Information Service that gas is likely to hit $4.00 a gallon before long. How crazed did buyers become over this prospect? Well, check out the chart below, which I’ve left unlabeled. Which stocks do you guess would be the very last to rally under the circumstances? If...
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Is Cluelessness About to Romp?

August 31 2005
We bought some more cheapie puts in Citi yesterday off a stingy bid that was filled when the stock grew frisky around mid-day. Inspired by a promotional message that I received recently from a brassy competitor, it would be tempting for me to tout annualized gains so far of 9000%, since the puts closed 0.10 above our 0.45 purchase price. But you know better – know that, in fact, the gain when...
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Markets Just Shrug It Off

August 30 2005
Mr. Greenspan’s recent, characteristically understated warning about a softening in home prices should have been enough to set stocks tumbling on Monday; instead, they climbed. That’s what happens, apparently, when you give investors a couple of days to mull over bad news while the markets are closed. With Katrina savaging the Gulf, shutting down drilling rigs and threatening to destroy...
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Last Chance To Buy Puts?

August 29 2005
The stock market continues to look like it’s prepping for a meltdown, but if Friday’s tired action is any indication, we may get a chance to buy some puts next week before the plunge begins. To be sure, trading volume has started to dry up in advance of Labor Day weekend, and this can sometimes cause price volatility to expand due to the absence of liquidity. This time around, though, because of the...
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Dulling Down Gold Fever...

August 26 2005
In early March, with gold futures trading $10 lower, I pledged that I would never become a shill for gold, nor would I send out any bulletins exhorting you to beg, borrow or steal every dollar within reach to plow into bullion. I believe I’ve kept my promise to avoid sensationalizing the case for gold, even if this has made Rick’s Picks a duller read for...
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Hidden Pivots Hold, But for How Long?

August 25 2005
We had bids in below the market yesterday for the QQQs, Diamonds, the mini-Dow and the mini-S&P, and even though each fell very precisely to the low I’d projected**, we still managed to come away empty-handed. That’s because the respective bottoms were not reached until the final minutes of the day, hours after my time limits on our bids had expired. Stocks had moved earnestly higher in the...
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Good Reasons To Be Bearish

August 24 2005
The chart below suggests that although we missed a great opportunity to short the Diamonds a couple of weeks ago, we’re likely to get another chance, and probably soon. Note that the most recent rally produced a price peak of 107.33 on August 10. That high came within just 0.05 points of an important hidden pivot at 107.38, strongly implying that the three-month bull cycle that produced it is...
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All Is Sunshine And Lollipops...

August 23 2005
The small put position that we held to expiration died ingloriously last week during my brief absence, as stocks continued to skate blithely on a narrow plank of less-than-horrendous news. The bulls, putting their always-sunny spin on world events, seemed oblivious to the glowering menace of $3 gas, the latest triumph of jihad in...
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Bulls' Best Hope Is for Oil to Peak

August 11 2005
I’ll be away from the office for the next ten days, so Thursday’s forecasts and recommendations will be the last until my return on Monday morning, August 22.  For what it’s worth, I should mention that the stock market has taken wicked dives in my absence more often than would seem probable. Coincidentally, however, a stockbroker friend who has...
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Lurker Says I'm Blowing Smoke

August 10 2005
Lurker Mike Ecklberg has let fly with some criticism of Rick’s Picks that warrants a firm response. He writes as...
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Will $65.02 Pivot Stop Oil's Surge?

August 09 2005
Crude oil quotes are approaching a potentially important top, although it’s too early to say whether this will keep pump prices from hitting $3.00 by autumn. Focusing on the September contract, we’ve been awaiting a short-able peak at exactly $65.02, a little more than a dollar above yesterday’s record-high $63.99. Some...
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Have a Jones For Buying Puts?

August 08 2005
A glum day on Wall Street, for sure, though not necessarily for Rick’s Picks subscribers. We went bottom-fishing against the trend in the mini-Dow futures, catching what turned out to be the...
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Stocks Look Primed to Fall

August 05 2005
For nearly two weeks, we’ve been expecting the S&P futures to spear a hidden-pivot resistance at 1249.75, clearing the way for a quick follow-through to at least 1272.75. However, it’s beginning to look as though they might not be up to the task. Yesterday’s stall at 1248.50 created a double top with last Friday’s, and it wouldn’t take much additional weakness for the futures to start...
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We're On Board For Gold's Surge

August 04 2005
Bullion has perked up nicely in the last few days, delivering on the promise of certain bullish technical signs that I cited here last week in an intraday bulletin: “Some VERY bullish action in gold this morning,” I wrote back then. “The ABCD pattern I've labeled in the August Gold...
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A Seminar Veteran Shares His Wisdom

August 03 2005
To our growing list of subscribers who have been through the trading-seminar mill, add Eric O., who offers some tips below that could help to shorten your learning curve. Eric writes as...
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A Sermon Aimed At Gloomy Gus

August 02 2005
Pessimism is frowned on at one of the chat groups that I frequent. The members are a quite diverse bunch, including big-time traders, money managers and financial speculators, but most of them evidently see eye to eye when it comes to the economy: sunny and warm on most days, with a chance of scattered showers. The group’s leader posted an open letter to...
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Subscriber Knows When to Fade Me

August 01 2005
Friday’s broad weakness turned my bullish forecasts to dross, but even so, I have my doubts that the rally has breathed its last. Subscriber Randy J. evidently made a few bucks fading my advice, which was to jump on near-term calls in the Diamonds and QQQs. He wrote as follows: “When you ‘threw in the towel’ and bought calls at-the-market, I had a...
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Citi's Weakness Promises Trouble

July 29 2005
Now here’s a coincidence: I was planning to comment on Citigroup’s reluctance to get in gear with the market when I received the following message yesterday afternoon from my technically savvy friend and old PSE colleague, Tom Tankka:  “Rick, any feelings about Citi’s weakness versus the market?”...
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Citi's Weakness Promises Trouble

July 29 2005
Now here’s a coincidence: I was planning to comment on Citigroup’s reluctance to get in gear with the market when I received the following message yesterday afternoon from my technically savvy friend and old PSE colleague, Tom Tankka:  “Rick, any feelings about Citi’s weakness versus the market?”...
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For All You Lurkers...

July 28 2005
The fact that my newsletter once came free to about 6,000 subscribers hasn’t  stopped at least a few of them from complaining constantly about how awful it was. “Go back to kindergarten and learn how to write,” admonished one. “And while you’re at it, try learning how to read a stock chart.” A frustrated trader, perhaps? You can never be sure,...
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A Reader's Tales Of Seminar Ripoffs

July 27 2005
Hey, if you’ve got a story to tell, don’t be shy! Yesterday’s tips here on how to spot phony gurus and trading instructors elicited some interesting tales from paid-up subscriber Joseph S., who qualifies as a true expert on the subject. Joe writes as...
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How to Spot Phony Gurus, Instructors

July 26 2005
Like many of you, I am constantly being bombarded by marketing hype from investment gurus who claim they will make me RICH. And although, like you, my gut reaction is to assume that most of them are charlatans, I too have a greedy spot for the right pitch. So far, though, I've come across nary a one that has delivered on its promise. Not that there aren’t any gurus out there whose advice can...
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Ominous Clouds

July 25 2005
I’ve toned down talk of Armageddon in my comments here recently, even though I remain convinced the U.S. and global economies are inching toward a deflationary bust of millennial proportions. Stock charts have helped to temper my...
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Google Sell-Off A Bull's Delight

July 22 2005
Google shares were getting bludgeoned in after-hours trading, down nearly $17 on word that revenues had grown by “only”100% over a year-earlier’s $700 million, and that profits had merely quadrupled. Here’s how the resident genius at Susquehanna Financial struggled to explain it: Revenue was a little better than published expectations, said Marianne Wolk, the firm’s Internet analyst,...
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Mini-S&P Coiled For Leap to 1260

July 21 2005
Yesterday’s two-and-a-half hour Q&A session covered quite a bit of ground, and I was able to field questions from more than a dozen paid subscribers during that time. Some of what we discussed bears repeating, including a 1242.50 target for the mini-S&P that was broached at the end of the session. That is now my minimum objective for this vehicle over the near term, and it will be short-able...
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Bond Futures Flash an Alert

July 20 2005
T-Bond futures have been flaccid since early June, presumably correcting the ten percent rally that began nine weeks earlier. But is it merely a correction?  From a hidden-pivot standpoint, the last few days have taken a heavy toll. Recall what I wrote here in early June: “After spiking to within three...
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Turning Burps Into Profits...

July 19 2005
It should be clear to you by now that we don’t need much price movement to trade ‘em up profitably -- only swings that produce intraday highs and lows, and the ability to use ultra-tight stop-losses. On Friday, for instance, the biggest intraday swing in the mini-S&P was just 6.25 points, or $312. In retrospect, you might ask why anyone would have bothered to attempt to trade such a burp. But if...
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Tedium's Seduction

July 15 2005
The chart below shows just how leaden stocks have become lately. Since peaking in late 2002, the VIX has fallen to within a hair of ten-year lows and now threatens to turn an already lethargic summer comatose. These days, technicians must burrow down to 15-minute charts to find anything resembling a trend, and the randomness of each session’s opening would vex a svengali. We continue to plug along...
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Google to $326, Gasoline to $3

July 14 2005
Yesterday morning’s Q&A session produced some eye-openers, including a new, $326 target for Google. The stock is trading just below $300 right now, having recorded an all-time high at $309 two weeks ago. Back in late May, with GOOG trading around $287, I projected a potentially shortable high at $315. Now, though, it looks as though the stock wants to go even higher. Because GOOG is a good proxy...
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The Mystery Of Anesthesia

July 13 2005
With Hurricane Dennis’s destructive power all but spent, news concerning Karl Rove’s mounting troubles dominated the airwaves yesterday. Notwithstanding the President’s expression of confidence in him, Rove will likely be history by August. Of considerably less interest was the turgid price movement on the nation’s major bourses. For traders, it was the kind of day that could make glue-sniffing seem...
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Evening News Feasts on Dennis

July 12 2005
The news media were feasting on Hurricane Dennis yesterday, even if it was no longer packing quite the punch of last year’s worst storms. In Washington, Karl Rove may have breathed a sigh of relief, since, between the weather and last week’s bombings in...
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Reading the Rally

July 11 2005
Thursday’s oversold bounce turned into an outright short-squeeze Friday, when stocks rose throughout the session with just one minor correction intraday. Fortunately, there needn’t be any confusion or guesswork about what is yet to come, since the thrust brought the Industrial Average to within inches of an important hidden-pivot resistance at 10465.77....
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Bombing Fails To Daunt Bulls

July 08 2005
Jihad came to the London Underground yesterday, killing 37 people and injuring another 700 but causing only a hiccup on Wall Street. The Dow Industrials ended the day with a 31-point gain after selling off hard in overnight trading when news of the bombing first hit. Perhaps the markets were reassured by Tony Blair’s morning TV appearance shortly after a series of explosions brought...
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Debating Odds Of Deflation

July 07 2005
Jim Otis, writing for The...
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Unleashing ASA

July 06 2005
With a currently bullish outlook on precious metals and the mining sector, we’re particularly eager to hear from subscribers with fresh ideas. Here’s one from subscriber Tim Huizenga that came my way during yesterday’s real-time Q&A session:...
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Trading Profits Will Come First

July 05 2005
Recent wrist surgery will constrain me from posting essays here over the next several weeks. Instead, I have increased the emphasis on identifying potentially profitable trades in stocks, options, commodities and mini-futures, and in providing detailed instructions for manevering in and out of these vehicles. My advice is geared not only toward short-term traders, but to...
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Trading Profits Will Come First

July 05 2005
  Recent wrist surgery will constrain me from posting essays here over the next several weeks. Instead, I have increased the emphasis on identifying potentially profitable trades in stocks, options, commodities and mini-futures, and in providing detailed instructions for manevering in and out of these vehicles. My...
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Gold Looks Ready For Thrust to $477

June 28 2005
I’ve reproduced two charts below, one suggesting that the euro is about to rise, the other that the dollar will fall. My conclusions are based on the dramatic way in which stochastic indicators for each have diverged relative to price. In the top chart, notice how the September euro’s five-day decline failed to get very oversold before the futures reversed and shot higher....
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A Soft-Shoe in Gold

June 27 2005
We had bids in below the market Friday for some QQQ calls, but perhaps we shouldn’t be too disappointed about not getting filled. The July 37s were trading for 2.00 apiece earlier this month and for 1.40 as recently as Thursday, but as the index tumbled yesterday toward an abysmal close, the July 37s came within 0.05 of our stingy 45-cent bid....
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Riding in Style To Soup Kitchen

June 24 2005
Investors supposedly were spooked by rising oil prices yesterday, but a glance at the chart below could make one wonder why they weren’t just as spooked last Friday and on Monday, when crude quotes first brushed against the $60 threshold. Wall Street denizens must have missed the previous day’s interview of Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Alan Greenspan, on Imus in the Morning. “No one...
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Toward Greater Profitability...

June 23 2005
I majored in English literature, one reason why my trading system is light on such quantitative tools as regression analysis and chaos theory.  Even so, I’m unaware of any other system that consistently yields swing points more precise than the hidden pivots I serve up here each day.  The...
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Don't Be Lulled...

June 22 2005
Just when you think things couldn’t get any duller…  This time, though, technical signs are mildly disquieting, perhaps warning that we should be on our guard. But against what? I refer you to the chart below, which shows that the DJIA’s funereal rally over the last two weeks has left stochastic tracks that look even more somber than the...
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Mr. Greenspan's Real Conundrum

June 21 2005
With summer narcolepsy beginning to infuse Wall Street like embalming ether, we’ll turn our attention once again to the far more interesting topic of the housing bubble. The bubble surely exists, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, but one wonders whether its inevitable collapse is being delayed by anticipation itself. Anyone not from Mars will have noticed by now that the...
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Morning in America For Home Builders?

June 20 2005
It was morning in America on Friday for the home-builders, whose shares all gapped higher after a creative analyst at Smith Barney came up with a hitherto unsuspected reason why we should still be bullish on the...
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Enjoying the Ride As Gold Lifts Off

June 17 2005
Gold quotes rose sharply yesterday, supported by heavy fund buying that included a million-ounce purchase by one player. I’d told you to expect a rally to at least 436.80, which is precisely where the August Comex contract topped before taking a 90-minute breather. A subsequent two-dollar retracement left the futures sufficiently recharged for a further push to 438.50, portending...
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Readers Weigh In On Deflation Threat

June 16 2005
My recent comments on deflation have prompted some interesting responses. Here’s one from Gary Tanashian, proprietor of...
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Will Buffett Be Early Victim of Deflation?

June 15 2005
Monday’s edition featured the thoughts of fellow deflationist Mike "Mish" Shedlock, who believes as I do that this world is far too deeply in hock to avoid a debt deflation. Mish covered a lot of ground in explaining why this is so, but I’d like to add my two-cents’ worth, since he left a few things unsaid that could affect all investors – even financial geniuses like...
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Jacko's Acquittal Trumps Oil Surge

June 14 2005
Sharply rising oil quotes sapped the bull’s vigor yesterday, turning what began as a promising day into yet another exercise in tedium. We were prepared to pounce on the Russell mini-contract regardless of whether it went higher or lower, and although it did both during the course of the day, the trading range was too narrow to get us long or short....
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Why Deflation Is Inevitable

June 13 2005
Today I introduce you to the deflationist arguments of Whiskey and Gunpowder editor Mike “Mish” Shedlock, whose logic is quite similar to my...
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Beating Spam The Easy Way

June 10 2005
Another flatulent day on Wall Street. But just as I was getting Friday’s Touts under way, this message popped up on my computer...
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Together, We Can Move the Market

June 09 2005
You’ve heard the saying, “a watched pot never boils.” Well, neither, apparently, does a watched stock market. Judging from my mail these days, tous le monde thinks shares are fixing either to scream or to collapse. Even my own technical indicators appear to be demanding some BIG event, and soon. And how did...
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Fed's Two-Step Squelches Buzz

June 08 2005
Investors reverted to their worrisome ways yesterday, taking stocks for a rollercoaster ride after seemingly contradictory statements about the Fed’s intentions were made, respectively, by Alan Greenspan and Jack Guynn, a member of the Open Market Committee. I won’t try to deconstruct either guy’s words here, since that might run afoul of the Fed’s...
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Short-Term Swoon Appears Imminent

June 07 2005
For now, I’m sticking with my prediction of a tediously bullish summer, but there are some unmistakable warning signs that suggest stocks could fall over the near-term, perhaps sharply. Below is a chart that I published intraday that shows an incipiently bearish arc developing in the Dow Average’s daily-bar stochastic. While it would require only a...
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Need Reasons To Be Bullish?

June 06 2005
It’s no secret: I’d rather be known as a child molester than keep company with CNBC’s bull-pen regulars. Let me tick off some of the reasons why we should shun the mindless optimism that these days passes for hard analysis on the Street: 1) the economy is being propped up by record borrowing; 2) a monstrous housing bubble could pop at any time; 3) two of the country’s largest...
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Lender Recalls 1990 Meltdown

June 03 2005
Below is another of the many letters I received in response to my recent commentary on the decline in mortgage-lending standards. It’s impossible to know how many Americans fear that a housing bust is imminent, but judging from my mail such fears run deep. The letter is from a man in the lending business whom I quoted here earlier. In further recounting his apprenticeship in the...
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Herd's Exuberance In Step With News

June 02 2005
The bad-news-is-good-news mania that has ruled financial markets in recent months appears to have given way to a new mood, one that apparently perceives good news as, well, good news. T-bond prices soared as yields on the 10-year bond smashed below 4.00%. When active trading ceased for the day, they were trading to yield 3.89%, their lowest level in 14 months. Shares were nicely...
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Loans Too Easy, Insiders Agree

June 01 2005
My recent feature on the steep decline in lending standards drew some illuminating responses. I will reprint several of them this week, starting with the following letter from a man who once worked for World Mortgage, the primary lending arm of Golden West Financial Corp.. Although Golden West still enjoys a stellar reputation, the source...
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Wised-Up Bettor Shares His Story

May 31 2005
In my commentary a few weeks ago, I painted a romantic picture of gamblers who while away their days at the racetrack, smoking Cuban cigars and splurging their winnings on the good life. A friend of mine who has spent a great deal more time at the racetrack than I, and who knows better, has asked for equal time. Fortunately he is a Harvard-trained...
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Lending Standards Plumb New Depths

May 27 2005
The U.S. real estate bubble continues to swell like a lava dome, supporting full-blown manias on both coasts and in quite a few cities, suburbs and towns in between. You'd have to live in a...
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Panning for Gold The Easy Way...

May 26 2005
Wednesday’s on-line Q&A session was quite a bit longer than usual, but it allowed me to field queries in real time from more than a dozen subscribers. Tradable issues that received coverage intraday included the mini-S&P and mini-Nasdaq contracts, as well orange juice futures, General Motors, the Housing Sector Index, Imperial Oil, Clifton...
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QQQ Bears Play Russian Roulette

May 25 2005
If red were to come up on a roulette wheel ten times in a row, would you start betting only on black? Many less-seasoned gamblers would, perhaps even increasing their bet size if the streak continued. That might sound like a way to make a huge score eventually, but in fact those who bet like this habitually are almost guaranteed to die broke. For,...
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Summer Forecast: Bullish Tedium

May 24 2005
Is it possible the chart below can provide us with a simple answer to the question of what lies in store for the stock market this summer? My eye is drawn to the overbought peaks corresponding to the DJIA’s two most recent highs on the daily chart.  There is no divergence here, only a regular pattern of...
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Gold, Euro Fall On French Polls

May 23 2005
June Gold has broken down once again with Friday’s breach of a hidden-pivot support at 417.70. Earlier in the week the futures took a weak bounce off that number that lasted for a few days, but now that it has been violated a test of round-number support at $400 seems likely. Bullion’s weakness was corroborated by corresponding strength in the...
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Missed Opportunity, Or Just a Mirage?

May 20 2005
The momentous debate over judicial filibusters is making C-Span more interesting these days than the stock market. I had both running side-by-side on my desk yesterday, but it was no contest. The E-mini S&Ps were in a trance-inducing pattern that did little more than amplify the overnight session’s faint pulse, producing gratuitous six-point...
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Wall Street Chant: To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!

May 19 2005
The stock market was at its nutty, kinky, entertaining, devil-may-care best yesterday as shares in the home builders exploded higher on word that the Fed intends to keep raising administered rates. "The federal funds rate appears still to be below the level that we would expect to be consistent with the maintenance of stable inflation and full...
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A Kinder, Gentler Sort of Trade War

May 18 2005
That’s gratitude for you. The Chinese have been selling us nearly everything we need to live the life of Riley on the cheap – flat-panel TV sets, stainless steel patio grills, down comforters, graphite-frame trail bikes, silk scarves, custom furniture, computerized running shoes, robotic vacuum cleaners, laser pointers, you name it....
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Gold, Euro, Dollar At Important Pivots

May 17 2005
Both gold and the dollar reached hidden-pivot targets yesterday that deserve our close attention. I’d advertised a 417.70 downside objective last week for Comex June Gold and an 86.33 rally target for the Dollar Index. Both objectives were very nearly met on Monday, with the Dollar Index topping at 86.39 and June gold bottoming at 418.20. I...
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Dollar Doesn't Know It Should Be Falling

May 16 2005
If ebbing fear of inflation is Wall Street’s current flavor of the week, can fear of deflation be far behind?  Before you answer that question, consider what was going on in the bond markets on Friday. For one, the 10-year T-note was banging away at our ambitious, hidden-pivot rally target, sending...
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Gold Bugs Will Get A Second Chance...

May 13 2005
Let’s you and I wake up this morning and break some mirrors, just to show the Karma who’s boss, okay? We’ll lean ladders against our houses and exercise beneath them at hourly intervals. And keep salt shakers at our desks to freshen the luck o’ the devil. And spray-paint our cats black, just to screw with our neighbors’ heads. And then, we’ll...
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Troy and Jim's Big Adventure

May 12 2005
The skies around Washington D.C. buzzed with urgent activity yesterday, matched by a crisis alert on the ground that sent the news media into a tizzy for several hours....
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Will Predict For Food

May 11 2005
Rick’s Picks subscribers who kept their Bulletin Launchers open yesterday received a timely morning update for the S&P futures that could have made one’s day. The mini-contract had just breached a hidden-pivot support at 1168.50, and although the low then was just a single point beneath the pivot, the slight breach of the...
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Gold Needs To Tag Up

May 10 2005
A week ago gold looked as though it needed just a little more weakness to set the stage for a potentially powerful rally. At the time, I specifically identified a promising hidden-pivot support in the Gold Bugs Index (HUI), and said it would have to be touched before bullion took off. The pivot lies at 172.69, but what we got instead was a so-far pathetic bounce from 175.32. This is not...
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Like Magic, 274,000 Jobs

May 09 2005
Pack journalism found the easy story in Friday’s Labor Department announcement -- that U.S. job growth was gangbusters in April. Since good news is bad news these days, this was as about as bad as it gets. As everyone knows, evidence of...
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Jacko's Stock Up As Ford, GM Fall

May 06 2005
You know it was a weird day when Michael Jackson’s stock rose while nearly everyone else’s fell. His lawyers put a 22-year-old on the witness stand who swore Jackson had not molested him as a child. You read that...
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Comes Captain Kerk, Flying Off a Cornice

May 05 2005
Readers will already know that I’m no big fan of General Motors or its cars, but you’ve got to hand it to Kirk Kerkorian for seeing great value in a company that many of us believe could not be jump-started with a nitro methane enema. Kerkorian has offered a very substantial premium to buy up to 28 million shares of the automaker’s stock, notwithstanding the fact that Wall Street has treated them...
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Where Were You When Fed Tightened?

May 04 2005
Quick Quiz: Fed meeting days provide an ideal opportunity for investors to: a) catch up on TiVo; b) clean the paperwork from their desks; c) play nine holes; d) meet their paramours for brunch; e) any or all of the above; f) none of the above. If you selected ‘e’ – any or all of the above -- then you’re probably a seasoned Fed-watcher. Which is to say, you have the good sense to be anywhere but in...
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Gold May Be Near a Turn

May 03 2005
  I’ve been doing my best to avoid raising your expectations for gold, since technical signs have not looked too promising for the last couple of...
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"Tap Paw Once To Get Short"

May 02 2005
A man tells his broker he would like to start trading stock index futures.  The broker warns against it, saying, "It’s  pretty risky. You can be up big one day and down big the next." "Oh, I know that,” replies the client. “That's why I'm only going to trade every other...
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Glum GDP News Fails to Cheer

April 29 2005
Investors should be careful what they wish for, since a few more tepid GDP reports like yesterday’s and someone might have to declare a recession. We’d almost begun to believe that any evidence whatsoever of a faltering economy would be music to Wall Street’s ears, since that, supposedly, is the only thing that might convince the Fed to stop tightening. Would that things were so...
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Oil Price Cracks, But Now What?

April 28 2005
Oil down, stocks up. Can we look forward to more of this? Sure looks like it. Bids for crude got savaged yesterday, and although the decline left prices sitting above a key low near $51 recorded ten days ago, the support looked unlikely to endure. Once it gives way, look for the June contract to sink to at least 49.19, a hidden pivot that should turn things around, if perhaps for...
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Waiting Out A Bull Trap

April 27 2005
For the past several days, we’ve eagerly awaited the opportunity to short the S&Ps futures at exactly 1170.75, a hidden pivot that promised to be the fat pitch of a trader’s dreams. It never occurred to us that so very modest a target would remain beyond the reach of bulls. But so far it has been -- despite the fact that as recently as last Thursday, the occasionally...
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GM Too Scary To Talk About?

April 26 2005
NBC led the evening news Monday night with the rhetorical question, “Can a troubled GM save its bottom line?” We’ve discussed GM’s mounting and seemingly intractable problems here many times before, most recently under the heading “Shrinking to Survive.” General Motors is getting smaller, all right,  but the process has a very different...
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Learning to Live With the Bomb...

April 25 2005
Investors had plenty to worry about on Friday, with oil quotes sharply on the rise and rumors circulating that North Korea would test a nuclear weapon over the weekend. These and other factors, including the usual...
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Nice Rally, But Doubts Linger

April 22 2005
Even IBM got in gear with yesterday’s strong rally, registering its first gain in fifteen trading sessions. You may recall that it was Big Blue that stoked the broad market’s decline a week ago, when Q1 earnings came in a nickel below expectations. When the news hit the tape after the close, investors wasted little time dumping not only IBM shares but nearly everything else. In...
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Blaming Inflation On Girls Gone Wild

April 20 2005
The “core” rate of inflation, whatever the hell that is, came in at 0.4% yesterday -- twice what had been expected by economists -- causing pundits’ usually feeble imaginations to leap farther than we can ever recall in a failed attempt to rationalize away our concerns. Are you ready for the number one reason why we shouldn’t be too...
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Are Gold & Silver Finally Airborne?

April 20 2005
“I'm confused!” writes Bill R., a paid-up Rick’s Picks subscriber. “Is this gold...
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Bearish Tide Laps At a Feisty Support

April 19 2005
Sellers who had inundated the stock market on Friday seem to have overslept yesterday, getting the week off to a ho-hum start. The Dow Industrials were never down more than 70 points intraday, and they finished off a mere 16 points, mocking those investors who may have spent the weekend steeping in anxiety. Considering the nearly $5 hit that 3M shares took, it’s probably a...
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Will Monday Bring Disaster?

April 18 2005
Stocks tumbled to their worst weekly finish in more than two years Friday, prompting some old-timers to wonder whether it might be the beginning of a 1987-style meltdown. For reasons that I will explain shortly, I doubt it. But we shouldn’t get our hopes up that, come Monday morning, the NYSE will announce that we were all punk’d. No matter what happens, though,...
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Nickel 'Surprise' Packs a Wallop

April 15 2005
There are days when Wall Street easily could have shrugged off word from IBM of a five-cent earnings shortfall, but yesterday wasn’t one of them. Big Blue reported 85 cents a share for the first quarter, but the analysts’ "dartboard number" evidently was a nickel higher....
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Snail and Worm Battle to Death

April 14 2005
Wednesday’s despairing wallow retraced all of the previous day’s short-squeeze rally. To make things worse, the decline was continuous, more or less, from the opening bell. What has the NYSE come to when the floor specialists can’t even muster a head-fake on the opening to sandbag widows, orphans and pensioners? Granted, the previous day’s rally completely lived up to our...
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So You Want To Be Rich?

April 13 2005
...
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Keeping Martha Off the Streets

April 12 2005
Westchester residents can breathe a sigh of relief now that a judge has rejected Martha Stewart’s request to shorten her confinement period. With Martha safely behind a picket fence until Labor Day or so, the locals will be able to go...
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Deflation Won't Create Billionaires

April 11 2005
Stray comments concerning the impending real estate crash perked up my e-mail on an otherwise dull Friday. I received from various sources, respectively, a CNBC report that 85% of the buyers in Miami’s condo market are speculators (probably true, according to an old...
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Feisty Citigroup A Bear-Killer?

April 08 2005
I put out an advisory yesterday morning when Citi was looking feisty enough to drag the entire market higher. Not that it actually could, given that the bull market for bank stocks peaked in 2000. But Citi nonetheless remains one of the key bellwethers for a go-go era that has yet to dance its last shing-a-ling. And when the company's shares are looking particularly strong, or...
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2 Gold Stocks To Nibble On

April 07 2005
Having sidestepped considerable pain a while back by bailing out of some low-priced mining stocks that were bound even lower, we are obliged to reconsider them now that they’ve come to despond so close to the zero axis.  Canyon Resources and Durban Roodeport have both fallen to levels where I’d said they’d become attractive. Not that...
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Slow Death For Traders

April 06 2005
Yesterday was yet another grueling test of patience for those trying to squeeze off a shot in the index futures. My crosshairs were trained on the S&Ps, but the only trade I executed all day was a misfire. I had a limit bid in somewhat below the market but inadvertently turned it into a market order with an impatient keystroke. So much for picking one’s opportunities....
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$60 Oil Just A Warm-Up?

April 04 2005
Crude futures have been moving quite precisely to our pivots, as some of you have noticed. The last minor-cycle peak fell just a nickel shy of a well advertised 58.21 projection, and the subsequent low at 53.45 (basis the continuous contract) missed by just 12 cents. Now the futures are off and running again, bound in my estimation for at least...
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Fleeting Joy In Mudville

April 04 2005
There was fleeting joy in Mudville Friday when the U.S. economy struck out, statistically speaking. Monthly payroll numbers came in weaker than “expected,” causing the kind of...
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Living Between Bollinger Bands

April 01 2005
For those who follow the stock market closely, nothing stirs the imagination like a prolonged stretch of boredom. The less stocks do, it seems, the more vividly we come to expect dramatic change. In such times, investors dwell in a purgatory of angst, the psychological boundaries of which are described, literally, by Bollinger bands: Squeeze them too tightly or for too...
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Betting With The Lunatics

March 31 2005
We covered our short position in the E-mini S&P yesterday, just before stocks broke out on the close. Now, the goal is to be flat or long until such time as the futures serve up another fat pitch. The last one came on March 7, when we shorted the June futures within a single tick of a multiyear high. Our downside objective was 1159.25, but yesterday’s rally negated that...
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No Shill For Gold

March 30 2005
A subscriber took me to task in an e-mail yesterday for scaling back my coverage of precious metal shares in the last few months. In retrospect, with gold in the dispiriting throes of a bear cycle that began in November, my response is to ask, What more might I have said? I am as bullish as ever on gold’s long-term prospects, but I cannot bring myself to be a cheerleader each day...
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America's Gas Pains

March 29 2005
I’d provided a strategy for Monday that would have temporarily flattened our short position in the S&Ps, but only if the futures had dipped slightly on the opening. Instead, they rose moderately, presumably because the dollar was up and crude down in Sunday overnight trading. Both obviously have been weighing on investors’ angst-ridden minds lately -- oil prices the moreso now...
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Volatility's Death Spiral

March 28 2005
It is a matter of record that America’s economic recovery over the last four years has been little more than a statistical hoax.  Although real GDP supposedly has grown by...
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Borrowers Should Go for Broke...

March 24 2005
[The following appears in Rick's Picks for the first time, although it ran in The Daily Reckoning earlier this...
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Worst Yet to Come For General Motors

March 17 2005
[Note: I will be on holiday with my family beginning tomorrow, so this will be the last commentary until next...
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Anthrax a Factor As Stocks Ease?

March 16 2005
Hard to tell what was driving stocks yesterday: anthrax, higher oil prices, unfavorable lunar influences, rising bond yields -- take your pick.  It may have been a combination of all of them, but if so, the net effect wasn’t very dramatic. The Dow was off a piddling 59 points, in line with other indexes that eased lower from around...
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Minor-Cycle Bear Appears Winded

March 15 2005
We’ve had bids in below the market for the mini-Dow futures and the E-mini S&P, but two days of waiting has yet to see either order filled. These are not lows of any great consequence, just minor-cycle bottoms that in theory, at least, should yield low-risk entry points for some well-leveraged bottom-fishing. We’re already short the S&Ps and have been looking for an...
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Complacency's Waning Days?

March 14 2005
We added to our short position in the S&Ps on Friday’s close, breaking a personal rule which holds that one should never stake out a new position minutes ahead of a weekend. But the temptation to augment our “don’t” bet proved irresistible, what with so many troubled-world bellwethers acting…troubled. Gold was staging for an assault on $450, bond yields were rising, bank...
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Slithering Toward The Fire Escape

March 11 2005
With bonds up and oil down, Wall Street breathed a small sigh of relief yesterday, sending the Dow Industrials moderately higher in an otherwise eventless session. Despite the rally, we still feel pretty good about our short in the S&P. There are two good reasons for this: first, we initiated the position at an unbeatable price, 1229.50; and second, Monday’s price peak in the...
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T-Bonds in Need Of Plunge Protection

March 10 2005
Exactly a month ago, just after the March bond futures made a long-term high at 117^12, I said there’d be nothing to worry about unless they fell below 109^14. At the time, a drop of that magnitude seemed pretty farfetched, especially considering that the consensus on bonds was almost unanimously bearish at the time.  What a difference a...
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Punk Dollar Prompts Scramble for Bullion

March 09 2005
Bullion had its best day in a while, spurred by a dollar that couldn’t stand up to firming oil quotes. Comex April Gold settled at 441.00 after spiking to an intraday high just below our minimum target at 441.60, a hidden pivot. In night trading the futures were moving still higher and had touched 442.00 at press time. This should all but clinch a run-up at least to the next minor...
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A Cheater's Guide To Russian Roulette

March 08 2005
So far so good, but it’s still way too early to be patting ourselves on the back. Yesterday we shorted the E-mini S&P contract at 1229.50, a single tick beneath what turned out to be the intraday high. In my commentary I had referred to the target as a “groundhog pivot,” since I believe it is capable of telling us whether the stock market is about to enter a bullish,...
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'Groundhog Day' For the Market

March 07 2005
We should prepare for a potentially important market top today or tomorrow, since the S&P futures are stealing up on a crucial hidden-pivot target at 1231.75 that I first identified here in mid-February.  You may recall that I subsequently adjusted the target downward to 1230.50, a hidden pivot that has...
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Rally Points To $60 Oil

March 03 2005
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Time Running Out For Fence-Sitters

March 03 2005
The death-spiral of shrinking volatility grows more impressive, and more ominous, each day.  Has the endgame already been imagined, perhaps, by the 1981 movie...
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Why We'll Keep Shorting Beazer

March 02 2005
When I say “the little sonofabitch,” you all know by now which stock I’m referring to: Beazer Homes USA. We’ve tried several times to short BZH shares, and each time, we’ve been stopped...
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Consumer Broke? Not a Problem...

March 01 2005
So dispiriting was yesterday’s economic news that perhaps we should view the Dow’s niggling 75-point loss as a harbinger of strength. New home sales fell 9.2% in January, personal income declined 2.3%, and auto sales went in the dumper. Despite all this, however, and even with the shares of Ford and GM off sharply, the blue chip average was never down more than about a hundred...
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Buying a Piece Of Howard Stern

February 28 2005
Friday’s rally was more of a waft than a squeeze. All of the would-be sellers evidently high-tailed it to Greenwich, Nutley and Fort Lee after lunch, leaving bulls and shorts – chickens and foxes in this context – to mind the coop on Wall Street. I quit at lunchtime myself, having missed the day’s one opportunity in the S&Ps as they slipped their tether just before 2 p.m....
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Surviving Gold's Ups and Downs

February 25 2005
We bailed out of two gold stocks yesterday – Canyon Resources and Durban Roodeport Deep – with no net losses. Not too shabby, considering the latter stock at one point was probing lows 50 percent beneath the previous day’s close. It was quite a day for DROOY...
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Martha'