The best way to see what Rick's Picks has to offer is to examine what we've said in the past. Below are links to archived comments that will give you the flavor of our commentary.
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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,... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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.... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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.... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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,... » Read more
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.... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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.... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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,... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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... » Read more
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.... » Read more
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... » Read more
February 24 2005
Martha Stewart’s notoriety came home to roost yesterday, launching the shares of the company that still bears her name temporarily beyond the reach of gravity. What could we have been thinking when we passed up Martha Stewart Living (MSO) stock just a few months ago as it languished at less than a third of its current value, $37? Didn’t... » Read more
February 23 2005
Here’s an endearing lead from the Wall Street Journal’s Tuesday evening wrap-up: “Surging oil and a dipping dollar sent a shudder through U.S. stocks today. Though many... » Read more
February 18 2005
I recommended the purchase of Citigroup June 47.50 puts yesterday around mid-morning, but someone stepped ahead of my miserly 1.00 bid and grabbed a bunch for 1.10. I sure hope it was a Rick’s Picks subscriber, since any profits that result will at least be “in the family.”... » Read more
February 17 2005
A tough market to trade, for sure. Perhaps I should have been more careful about what I wished for? A while back, I asked The Rainmaker to give me just a little movement in the S&P futures and maybe the barest hint of a trend -- that would be enough, I thought. How was I to know that the E-mini contract would tighten down to a daily... » Read more
February 16 2005
When we think of outsourcing, it usually involves farming out mundane services and products to low-wage producers in China,... » Read more
February 15 2005
“Hey, Rick!” writes long-time subscriber Joe M. “Bob Moriarty, John Mackenzie and Jeff Kern have all given buy signals within the past few weeks, and that’s good enough for me. Could you give some possible entry points in Hecla, Vista Gold, Coeur... » Read more
February 14 2005
What caused stocks to streak higher yesterday, albeit briefly? We may never know, but it looked as though shorts were feeling each other’s pain for a little while. It was rumored that there were rumors of bin Laden’s capture, but that story has become so old by now that it’s hard to imagine traders would buy into it, literally. All morning, we’d looked diligently for an... » Read more
February 11 2005
Our hidden-pivot targeting has been extremely accurate lately, producing tradable swing points in gold and energy that worked out to the penny. In fact, recalling the targets we used this week to bottom-fish in March crude oil, Durban Roodeport Deep and Canyon Resource shares, the total error for all three issues was just a single penny.... » Read more
February 10 2005
So far, so good. We saw the Dollar Index reverse on Tuesday from within 0.02 points of a hidden-pivot target at 85.37. It subsequently traded down to 84.89 yesterday, but it’s still too early for me to assert confidently that this so-far very modest, half-point decline is the beginning of a significant downtrend. It might be, is about all I can say at the moment. The most... » Read more
February 09 2005
To the many of you who are closely attuned to gold’s vital signs, let me broach the possibility that the dollar reached a short-term top yesterday. Rick’s Picks has been bullish on the buck for the last two months and recently projected a rally top in the Dollar Index at exactly 85.37. Yesterday, this hidden-pivot was exceeded by just... » Read more
February 08 2005
The stock market got off to such a potently wretched start in 2005 that few on Wall Street seemed concerned about whether an NFL or AFL team would win the Superbowl. Not that investors who are also Eagles fans could have cared. If you’re old enough to remember the glory days of Chuck Bednarik, Maxie Baughan, and, um, Pete Gogolak, then... » Read more
February 07 2005
We had second thoughts about shorting the 30-year bond yesterday after recalling how it went berserk the last time payroll figures were released. Good thing, too, that we passed up the trade. Although Friday’s action wasn’t quite so unnerving as last month’s, the March contract still managed to cover a 1-1/2 point range in mere minutes. As a result, our rally target, a hidden... » Read more
February 04 2005
This is “take two” for today’s essay, since, as two astute readers have pointed out to your red-faced editor, the March gold contract that I featured in my commentary does not exist. In fact, as the label in the upper left-hand corner of the graph makes clear, it was the February contract that I was analyzing. This revelation still leaves me shy of my... » Read more
February 03 2005
Bond markets were relatively subdued yesterday as the Fed Open Market Committee raised the federal-funds rate for a sixth consecutive time. Perhaps traders were saving their energy for Friday, when payroll data is scheduled to be released. The last time around, on January 7, it was “Bonds Gone Wild!” The futures moved almost three... » Read more
February 02 2005
Our real-time Q&A session yesterday covered quite a bit of ground, from the XAU to cotton futures, to LEAPS and Kansas July wheat, to Korean Pohang Iron and Steel (aka Posco). I was out of the office most of the morning and therefore unable to monitor... » Read more
February 01 2005
Pictured below are two very sporty cars that changed hands over the weekend at the Scottsdale auction. The one that looks like a cross between a vintage Corvette and a Cadillac Eldorado is actually a 1954 Oldsmobile concept car. It seats two and is... » Read more
January 31 2005
The Dow Industrials would have finished the day unchanged, if not for the wallop that Merck took around mid-day. Shortly thereafter, I posted a Bloomberg article by Michael Lewis that marveled at the complacency that has seemingly kept financial markets from unraveling. Complacency was the theme of Friday’s... » Read more
January 28 2005
I’ve been increasingly eager to short this market all week, but it stubbornly refuses to roll over. Even more frustrating is that the feeble rallies that have scored marginal new highs each day have fallen just shy of hidden-pivot targets where I’d told you to get short. The S&Ps, for example. The nominal uptrend has pointed for the last couple of days to a tradeable top at... » Read more
January 26 2005
I tried to get across the message yesterday that we needn’t sit on our thumbs while waiting for the precious metals sector to come alive. Like many of you, I hold some mining stocks that I’d rather not think about at the moment, DROOY, Endeavour and Pacific Rim among... » Read more
January 25 2005
With crude prices stealing up on $50 once again and elections in Iraq just five days off, the bulls should be prepared to write this week off. For our part, we’ve been focusing on Dow and S&P targets somewhat below... » Read more
January 24 2005
February gold turned energetically higher on Friday without having quite reached the 418.70 correction target I’d advertised. As a result, the near-month contract now looks like a solid bet to reach a hidden pivot at 431.20, probably within a day or two. This scenario impelled me to put out a bulletin intraday for subscribers eager to jump aboard.... » Read more
January 21 2005
A downbeat quarterly report from eBay supposedly bummed out Wall Street the other day, but shouldn’t IBM’s stellar numbers have compensated? Apparently not, since even Big Blue itself has been having trouble resisting the bearish tide that has swept stocks lower since the beginning of the year. With a healthy increase in sales, the computer giant’s net rose 12% to a record $3.04... » Read more
January 20 2005
Using a three-tick stop-loss, we shorted T-bond futures yesterday a hair off their intraday high. That was just before they plunged nearly a full point to reverse a deceptively strong opening. It’s been a while since we traded this vehicle, and in retrospect it’s clear that the only way we could have profited would have been to short option straddles and strangles each and every... » Read more
January 19 2005
The dollar’s modest rally yesterday stalled within mere hundredths of a point of a hidden-pivot target, but don’t expect this flimsy impediment to withstand another charge. If and when it’s breached, the March dollar contract will become an odds-on bet to climb at least another two percent, putting further pressure on gold quotes that have barely managed to hold their own since... » Read more
January 14 2005
I couldn’t have imagined how blessed I was, relatively speaking, when 120 mph winds uprooted 10-foot sections of my fence a month ago and blew them all over the yard. It took me and my neighbor just a few days to fix the damage, but it will take months or even years to undo the devastation wrought by recent mudslides in... » Read more
January 13 2005
News of November’s record-breaking trade deficit sent the dollar tumbling yesterday, but don’t be surprised if investors take leave of their senses soon again and the dollar resumes its bear rally. Until Wednesday, the buck was having a pretty good year, actually, with a gain of nearly 5% against the euro. It’s a dead-cat bounce, to be... » Read more
January 12 2005
We’ve always paid close attention to the charts Beazer Homes and Citigroup, two companies that have benefited disproportionately in recent years from the Fed’s easy-credit policies. In the case of Citi, the loose lending promoted by the central bank amounted to a license to print money. And for homebuilders like Beazer, low mortgage rates and securitized debt markets have provided... » Read more
January 11 2005
Many of the issues we track moved faintly against the forecast yesterday. Gold shares showed a weak buoyancy that barely qualifies as a holding pattern – in a downtrend, to be sure -- while the dollar pulled back slightly after last week’s strong run-up. Quotes for February crude fell too, but not before cracking the $47 level for the first time since early October. The rally... » Read more
January 10 2005
Mining stocks generally rose on Friday while bullion quotes fell, but the burden of proof remained with the bulls. Price action in Comex February gold was particularly telling, since, for the second straight day, the futures trounced a hidden-pivot support – this time at 420.80 -- that should have produced a discernible bounce. Instead,... » Read more
January 07 2005
Bullion quotes finished off their lows yesterday, but not before wreaking technical damage that portends at least somewhat lower prices. We scratched a trade in the February mini-gold contract after buying precisely at a bottom that produced the day’s best bounce, albeit one that lasted for only an hour. The subsequent intraday low was... » Read more
January 06 2005
Some of you evidently can’t wait to jump on the gold stocks even though they remain in the throes of a fairly severe correction. For those eager to buy something…anything, we can greatly simplify and perhaps enhance the timing of your intended plunge by closely monitoring two mining-sector bellwethers: Newmont and the AMEX Gold Bugs... » Read more
January 05 2005
We’re off to a good start this year, even if the U.S. stock market is not. For one, we sidestepped the weakness in gold and the broad averages by taking profits in several issues before they started to fall. For two, a stock that we did buy, Cameco (CCJ), has been on a holy tear and even managed to eke out a $1.15 gain yesterday as most other stocks were falling. We took some more... » Read more
January 04 2005
Stocks reversed sharply yesterday after a gangbusters opening in nearly every sector but precious metals. Intraday, the Dow Industrials fell 139 points from high to low – a minor surprise, considering crude oil quotes were down more than $3. Bullion and most mining stocks gapped lower on the opening and continued sinking until the final... » Read more
January 03 2005
The new year has gotten off to a volatile start, with rabid reversals in numerous issues that we track and a downdraft in the precious metals sector. The latter probably has further to fall, since the Gold Bugs Index has just breached a hidden-pivot support at 210.33 that was all that stood between current levels and another hidden support 203.91, about 3 percent lower. For a look at some real-time targets, step inside for this morning's Q&A... » Read more