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.
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