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.
November 28 2007
Think there’s a chance the Dow Industrials will be trading at least one percent lower a couple of months from now? So do we. Now suppose someone was willing to give you 5-to-1 odds that it won’t happen – that the Dow will be at current levels or higher come late January. Would you take that... » Read more
November 27 2007
The stock market’s lazy drift lower turned ugly in the final hour yesterday, demonstrating once again that the Santa factor is no match this year for investors’ unusually severe jitters. The Yuletide effect should have been working at full-strength, given that weekend shopping reports were quite upbeat. (We’re not sure whether to believe these reports ourselves, since,... » Read more
November 26 2007
Extremely light volume allowed DaBoyz to plump up stocks during the traditionally brain-dead-but-buoyant post-Thanksgiving Friday. The short-squeeze added 182 points to the DJIA, recouping exactly half of the losses sustained earlier in the holiday-shortened week. However, we were wholly unpersuaded of... » Read more
November 21 2007
December Gold turned sharply higher yesterday, trampolining $25 from an overnight low that lay within just four ticks of our downside target, a Hidden Pivot. Subscribers will recall that we were expecting the correction to go a bit further last week when the futures were hovering around $793, down $55... » Read more
November 20 2007
Yesterday being the Monday before Thanksgiving, we arose with expectations of the Dow opening a hundred points higher on a gap, then tacking on another hundred points as bears struggled to extricate themselves from the trap. Lo, the Indoos plummeted from the opening bell and were down as... » Read more
November 19 2007
When our bird flu correspondent, Erich Simon, is not immersed in the potentially world-ending details of the pandemic, he sometimes likes to tote up the ways in which gold bugs could eventually profit from the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of bankers and their Friends in (very) High Places. Some... » Read more
November 15 2007
In the past week, Rick’s Picks has been monitoring the put options of a stock that looks extremely vulnerable to an economic downturn.... » Read more
November 14 2007
DaBoyz seized bears hard by their scrota yesterday, hoisting stocks as high as possible in anticipation of the next all-but-inevitable cascade. We fought the tape all day long in the chat room, reminding ourselves as stocks rampaged higher that there still looms for America a debt deflation, a real... » Read more
November 13 2007
The dollar’s feeble bounce yesterday seemed to be all that was keeping the stock market from falling apart. Even so, the Dow Industrials still managed to reverse a 120-point gain and finish down 55 points on the day. Tech stocks continued to tumble, creating a powerful drag on the averages.... » Read more
November 12 2007
Depending on how deep the recession is a year from now, we could easily wind up with Hillary Clinton as America’s first Social Democrat president. With hard times bearing down on us, she’d be able to drop her phony centrist pose and openly embrace FDR, if not yet Karl Marx, as her life’s inspiration. How could any Republican hope to beat her if... » Read more
November 09 2007
To many of those who attempted to trade yesterday, the yo-yo action may have seemed like a game of “fetch” with a dog. You toss the ball as far as you can, Fido brings it back to you, panting for more. You fling the ball even harder the next time. Pooch tirelessly retrieves it, then does it again. And again. And again. And so it went... » Read more
November 07 2007
You don’t need to be a chartist to feel the weight the Dow Industrials have imposed on bulls of late. Imagine that the enhanced, red price bar is a surfer intent on paddling over the gathering swells. They are so high, however, that he would not be able to even see the top of the first, let alone the scary crests mounting behind it. Again, thinking... » Read more
November 06 2007
The Dow Industrials rallied to finish a hundred points off their lows yesterday, suggesting Wall Street half-believes Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are the only financial players in the too-big-to-fail category with daunting problems. After the close, The Wall Street Journal reported that “the markets wobbled amid continued investor concern... » Read more
November 05 2007
Comex Gold blew past $800 with such winning ease on Friday that perhaps it’s not too early to start thinking of the supposed barrier as support rather than resistance. We wouldn’t want any cockiness on our part to jinx the next thrust, to an expected $907, but gold bugs have reason to be optimistic that this threshold will soon be reached for the first... » Read more
November 02 2007
Reality won a rare round on U.S. stock exchanges yesterday, but permabears should ponder the chart below before whooping it up too deliriously. Notice that on a day in which the Dow Industrials fell by a whopping 362 points, the QQQs were down less than a point, settling a hair lower than Wednesday’s bottom. In... » Read more
November 01 2007
The Fed eased yesterday while admonishing investors not to expect any more. Yeah, sure. Like a spoiled kid, Wall Street has learned that it can get whatever it wants from the central bank by whining, sulking, and feigning pain. Wanna bet that by this time next month, traders will have priced in a near-certain... » Read more
October 31 2007
Tasked with dragging the U.S. stock market higher all by itself, Google could not quite get the job done yesterday. Although the stock ended the session with a nearly $15 gain, preventing Nasdaq-based indexes from falling, the Industrial Average went its separate way, closing with a 78-point loss. Given that the stock market’s illusion of strength is all that is keeping the U.S. economy from going... » Read more
October 30 2007
This could turn out to be quite the week, what with Gold fixing to catapult past $800, crude oil within easy striking distance of $100/barrel, and the Fed cooking up a speedball (aka, a “Belushi”) to resuscitate credit addicts for a new round of binge buying. There was a time when Wall Street might have show signs of nervousness ahead of such... » Read more
October 29 2007
We’ve long assumed that a collapsing dollar would take the global economy with it, but perhaps we were being too pessimistic? After all, the Dollar Index has fallen by 36 percent since 2002, but life goes on. Moreover, when the greenback slipped to historical new lows on Friday, hardly anyone seems to have... » Read more
October 26 2007
The Nasdaq index has been slithering sideways for nearly two weeks, so you might as well flip a coin if you’re keen on betting which way stocks are finally going to break, up or down. And forget about forming any strong opinions before the close, since that’s unlikely to produce better results than a coin-toss.... » Read more
October 25 2007
Although we began yesterday long some QQQ puts and intending to hold them till Armageddon, we had second thoughts when sellers lost heart early in the session. The Dow was down 200 points at the time, but the blue chip average was clearly struggling to fall any further. After exiting the puts for a modest profit, we went back to spectating. In retrospect, the only place where the world seemed... » Read more
October 24 2007
Bosox caps and T-shirts are everywhere -- even here in Colorado, where Rockies fever has built to a crescendo. Of course, Yankees logos are everywhere too. But it’s not the same thing. People wear Yankees caps and shirts for many reasons other than to advertise their loyalty to the team. For instance, Hillary... » Read more
October 23 2007
Surely a stock market trading near record highs and apparently in love with the housing bust, a looming recession, a collapsing dollar, $100 oil and the prospect of Hillary Clinton as our next president can shrug off lousy third-quarter earnings, right? We had our doubts, especially when we saw the S&P futures getting savaged Sunday night, continuing the... » Read more
October 22 2007
Inches from despair, battered and bruised by a stock market maniacally on the rise, we’d nearly given up hope of enjoying a “fun” expiration day any time soon. Boy, were we ever wrong! The Dow took an exhilarating 370-point plunge on Friday as October puts and calls breathed their last – and for a few glorious... » Read more
October 19 2007
What the hell do Apple and Google care whether oil hits $100 a barrel? The shares of both companies pushed intrepidly higher yesterday even as the price of crude approached $90 for the first time. If quotes were eventually to reach $300 a barrel, we’re sure stock market bulls would find umpteen... » Read more
October 18 2007
Even with a crystal ball it would be tough to make money trading options on such popular vehicles as the Diamonds and QQQQs. That’s because, when you are buying puts and calls on these securities, you are trading mainly against very smart machines, not people. If you were to monitor price fluctuations in QQQQ and Diamond (DIA) puts and calls... » Read more
October 17 2007
Once again, stocks failed to recoup the day’s losses with that closing-hour stampede of short covering that has become a tradition on the NYSE. We’ve grown so accustomed to the Daily Goosing ourselves that when it fails to occur, as was the case in the last two days, we start to worry that something is amiss. But what? Why would Wall Street bulls... » Read more
October 16 2007
An odd day for sure. The birds were agitated and the dogs were barking, and yet…no earthquake. Around mid-morning, with the DJIA off about 160 points, we would have given odds that the blue chip average would finish the day either down 250 points, or unchanged due to a short-squeeze in the final hour. In fact, neither occurred. The Industrial Average... » Read more
October 15 2007
We continue to view Thursday’s sharp selloff on Wall Street as little more than the beginning, and end, of a fleeting shakeout -- one intended to bring stocks down to levels where they can be accumulated at cut rates by Da Boyz before the scoundrels goose shares once again, renewing an all but endless, and seemingly virtuous, cycle of asset inflation. The bullish case is buttressed by several... » Read more
October 12 2007
I spent yesterday in a Denver courtroom, blissfully beyond the reach of the brain-devouring virus that evidently has afflicted Wall Street in recent months. I was there in support of a friend, Bill S., whose seventh DUI had landed him in jail for a year. Now he was back in court trying to get the sentence reduced, encouraged by his lawyer to think the... » Read more
October 11 2007
With the Dow Industrials down 165 points yesterday, the Nasdaq index and the puts we held on it were in a bullish warp – so much so as to prevent our taking even a small a partial profit. We usually advise doing so early on in each trade, so that even if we are stopped out there will be no loss, not even a small one, after commissions. In this instance,... » Read more
October 10 2007
Take it from a hard-core permabear: This market is going higher – possibly much higher. We edged our forecast for the Dow Industrials up to 15175 a while back, even as we were telling you that the real estate sector is about to become a Depressionary bog. Are these... » Read more
October 09 2007
Two bellwether stocks, Apple and Google, exceeded challenging Hidden Pivot rally targets yesterday, hinting that they will lead the broad averages higher for at least the next several days. For more than a week, we’d been looking for Apple to reach a minimum 164.22 and Google to hit 602.04. After climbing to... » Read more
October 08 2007
I’ve been a Colorado Rockies fan for exactly a week, having jumped on their bandwagon just as the excitement was starting to build here in Denver last weekend. A pair of skybox tickets for the second of three games against the Diamondbacks dropped into my wife’s lap, and so there we were at Coor’s Field last Saturday night, feasting on brats and beer, and... » Read more
October 05 2007
Microsoft’s Halo 3 has racked up $300 million in sales in its first week – no small accomplishment for a company that has yet to put out a decent Media Player after eleven tries. Maybe it’s because all of the good ideas contained in Halo, as well as the code, came from outside... » Read more
October 04 2007
So, the Street supposedly believes the worst of the credit crunch might be over. We’d say that’s a tad optimistic, considering the real estate sector is still weakening and likely to deteriorate even further because of the huge backlog of unsold homes. Regardless, DaBoyz evidently are going to need a story with more sizzle to re-ignite the short-squeeze that has provided nearly every... » Read more
October 03 2007
With a “Hillbilly Smackdown” featured on Jerry Springer yesterday, it’s a wonder anyone was trading stocks. We gave it a try ourselves, attempting to “work” a backspread position in Citigroup, but the stock was untradable as it vibrated within an 8-cent range most of the day.... » Read more
October 02 2007
Who ever said DaBoyz don’t have a sense of humor? Even those of us who were on the wrong side of the trade got a good laugh yesterday when Citi shares went bonkers on word that the subprime mortgage debacle and a few related problems had cost the banking colossus nearly $6 billion in the last quarter. The news... » Read more
October 01 2007
The silence that has greeted the dollar’s collapse is eerie. You don’t have to be an old-timer to remember when such an event would have been news. Not any more, though. Maybe it’s because no one really understands what a falling dollar means, other than that a hotel breakfast of juice, toast and eggs now costs upwards of fifty dollars in London and... » Read more
September 28 2007
Yesterday’s snooze fest was not without historical purpose, since the pause will allow the Dow Industrial Average to set a new record high on a Friday -- a theatrical flourish that we could have expected. The Indoos settled yesterday at 13913, meaning they will have to rack up only a further 109 points this morning to achieve the milestone. The only question is whether the blue chip average... » Read more
September 27 2007
Another rancid Whoopee Cushion breeze set Wall Street’s pennants aflutter yesterday. And forget about profiting from these stupid little rallies, since they are pretty much over before your data software has drawn more than a bar or two on the three-minute chart. Occasionally there are going to be variations. Like yesterday. There was the... » Read more
September 26 2007
The chart below shows what the Fed is up against in trying to resuscitate a U.S. economy already dangerously glutted with debt. The dip at the right edge reflects a decline in money velocity to multiyear lows. What it implies is that the “multiplier effect” of fresh credit is not working with nearly as much... » Read more
September 25 2007
Talk about investment hubris getting pumped to the max! Listen to what one market veteran, Amanda Sharp, told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal recently: “If we were to get a crash or correction, there would be a nice cleaning out,” she says. Would that we all shared Ms. Sharp’s brash confidence as we await... » Read more
September 24 2007
We’re convinced that no amount of monetary stimulus can revive the real estate boom at this point, even if the Fed seems determined to try. But suppose we’re wrong and home prices take off again? Does anyone actually believe that that would lead the economy back to health? Of course not (Larry Kudlow aside). It would simply postpone a debt deflation that by now has become as likely as…the next... » Read more
September 21 2007
After pickpocketing widows and pensioners yesterday via a fleeting head-fake on the opening, DaBoyz turned Citi shares sharply south, wiping out half of the ill-gotten gains achieved two days earlier via a very nasty short-squeeze. The stock’s 2.5 percent drop does not bode well for the market as a whole,... » Read more
September 20 2007
Is the Dow on its way to new all-time highs? We wouldn’t bet against it at the moment, having exited a short position in Citigroup the other day just before it and a whole bunch of other stocks took off. A global leader in the smoke-and-mirrors business, Citi seemed like a perfect proxy for a stock... » Read more
September 19 2007
Although it was no trick to see yesterday’s Fed-induced short-squeeze coming, it took imagination to anticipate its rabid ferocity. We had advised shorting into any buying panic because it was bound to end with the question “Okay, what now?” hanging over Wall Street. And so it has, probably, even if it takes a few more days for the lack of a satisfying answer to that question to... » Read more
September 18 2007
Place your bets, folks! We’ve heard good arguments both for and against a Fed easing today but think the odds favor the doves. One of our regular correspondents, Erich Simon, actually expect the Fed to tighten – a very distant longshot, in our view – and we have reprinted his comments at bottom. One middle of-the-roader is Don Luskin, an acquaintance from our PSE options-floor... » Read more
September 17 2007
We’ve been enthusing about gold one rally at a time for more than a year, but it may be time to loosen up and imagine bigger possibilities. Our minimum upside objective has been 736.80 ever since the December Comex contract was trading in the low 690s. However, someone in the... » Read more
September 13 2007
Here’s a name to remember six months from now: Joseph Carson. The economist works for a firm called Alliance Bernstein, and he thinks the odds of recession are no worse than five percent. While conceding that the housing sector remains a risk, Joe says consumers have already scaled back to adjust. “Spending trends point to modest growth in the U.S., not a recession.” ... » Read more
September 12 2007
Our immediate target for December Gold is 736.80, but we didn’t expect it to get there so quickly when we aired the forecast last week with the futures trading in the low 690s. ... » Read more
September 11 2007
With a full-blown real estate crash perhaps no more than five or six months away, and the black clouds of recession-or-worse massing on the horizon, you have to wonder what kind of dolt would be buying stocks at these levels. The simple answer is that it is not dolts, but bears covering shorts, who are providing nearly all of the buoyancy these days. For, even the reckless bozos... » Read more
September 10 2007
We’ve had quite a run calling the swings lately in Comex Gold. Most recently, on Friday, a trade touted as the Pick of the Day caught the low of a $15... » Read more
September 07 2007
Will the Fed vote to loosen when it next meets on September 18? It seems almost a foregone conclusion on days when the stock market is getting pummeled, often because of depressing statistics from the housing sector. But what about days like yesterday, when shares were getting short-squeezed higher, strong retail sales were being... » Read more
September 06 2007
Frazzled bears got a chance to relax Wednesday on news that pending home sales had fallen far more steeply in July than anticipated. Unnamed “economists” reportedly were “expecting” a drop of about 2 percent, but the actual figure was more than six times that, 12.2%. The Dow Industrials fell 200 points during the day as a result, and... » Read more
September 05 2007
I’m headed back to Denver this evening after a a week in the Bay Area that was part business, part pleasure. The highlight of the trip was a free concert in... » Read more
September 04 2007
We congratulate the estimated 80,000 homeowners who could conceivably benefit from the mortgage bailout announced on Friday, but our guess is that not many big lenders, including the banks of Europe and Asia, are sharing their sense... » Read more
August 30 2007
We have no more confidence that the Fed chairman will get us out of this mess than we did in his predecessor’s ability to stop it from happening. Ben Bernanke is supposedly a student of the Great Depression, and so we might have expected him to change tactics long ago -- from battling inflation to warding off the far more serious threat... » Read more
August 29 2007
Early in yesterday’s session, with the Dow Industrials off a hundred points but stubbornly refusing to give up any more ground, bears were sounding a despondent note in the Rick’s Picks chat... » Read more
August 28 2007
We rarely open a new position in the closing minutes of a session, let alone on a Friday moments ahead of the closing bell, but we did so last week, shorting the QQQQs three ticks off what turned out to be the intraday high. Betting against the house, we bought some October 48 puts for $1.31 just as DaCubes were kissing a Hidden Pivot... » Read more
August 27 2007
Heading into the final hour on Friday, we raised doubts in the Rick’s Picks chat room that DaBoyz had the cohones to try and squeeze stocks above daunting layers of supply. And that wasn’t our only mistake. Get this: We inadvertently transposed a 667.10 Hidden Pivot target for October Gold that... » Read more
August 24 2007
We usually think of the Fed as operating quietly behind the scenes to help keep the credit-based economy lubricated. Not this time, though. The central bank has had to come out in the open, mainly because the troubles it has been trying so frantically to paper over are as visible as the plague of weathered “For Sale” signs on our neighbor’s lawns. Given the extent of our credit... » Read more
August 23 2007
To paraphrase Tinkerbell, “A little more fairy dust, and u-u-u-p we go!” We boasted here yesterday that we could short the market almost risklessly no matter how strong it acts, and so we did. Our trading vehicle was the Diamonds (DIA), an ETF that tracks the cash Dow average point for point,... » Read more
August 22 2007
The chart below shows the Industrial Average working on a bullish flag. This is accumulation, plain as can be, and it suggests the stock market is looking for a reason, any reason, to grab shorts by the balls and squeeze them for a quick 200-400 points. Search brokerage houses from Maine to San Diego and you wouldn’t find a single... » Read more
August 21 2007
Here’s a front-page headline from the New York Times that gave us a chuckle the other day: “Few Heard Ticking Credit Time Bomb.” Few who are not deaf, dumb and blind,... » Read more
August 20 2007
Before we join the stampede to buy the Dow Industrials back up to 14000, let us consider what stock market investors would be contriving to ignore. Here’s a short list of nettlesome realities from David Rosenberg, Merrill’s Lynch’s chief U.S.... » Read more
August 17 2007
Read John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic book on the 1929 Crash if you think there is something unusual about the stock market’s wild swings of late. In fact, such craziness was routine as shares worked their way toward the historical top of August 1929. We’re running a little ahead of schedule this time, having seen the Dow Industrial Average peak just above 14000 in mid-July. But... » Read more
August 16 2007
Does anyone recall the last time stocks came unglued on the Wednesday of an option expiration week? We surely don’t. Usually it’s a pump-and-dump day that you can circle on your calendar. Here’s the way it works: Monday blahs give way to The Tuesday Turnaround, which in turn sets up stock for... » Read more
August 15 2007
More signs that we’ve entered a bear market: The downdrafts are growing increasingly predictable, and the swoons no longer give way to quick, complete recoveries. By “predictable,” we don’t mean to imply that one can now short stocks on the close and sleep like a baby, for one cannot. Indeed, since no one knows what will occur on the opening bell, to act as though you do is to... » Read more
August 14 2007
What does a rapidly deteriorating U.S. housing sector have to do with the global economy? Answer: everything. The question was asked in the... » Read more
August 13 2007
I’m in Atlantic City for a high school reunion this weekend, catching up with friends not only from ACHS Class of ’67, but from grade school and even earlier. To those of you who have visited the town, I’ve always advised skipping the casinos and heading straight to the only place on... » Read more
August 10 2007
We’ve harped on the theme of debt deflation many times in the past, but not recently because I had despaired of finding someone who could score any points taking the other side of the argument. Alas, now my best hope for a good debate, Fred Hapgood, has let me down. Briefly a teacher at... » Read more
August 09 2007
Back from a week’s vacation in the tropics and freshly infused with sunbaked sanity, we view the stock market’s bizarre spasms in recent days as the death rattle of speculators gone criminally berserk with Other People’s Money. For how else to reckon the wild price swings of late?... » Read more
August 08 2007
Tan, rested and ready – but for what? My week-long getaway to Margaritaville, kids in tow, allowed me to catch up completely on sleep and pulp fiction but only to partially escape the heinous stupidity of a stock market in Fed-watching mode. There was maybe even a touch of the old... » Read more
August 07 2007
I'll be in Margaritaville from July 30-August 7, attempting to exist without a laptop or cell phone for the first time in more than four years. Your... » Read more
July 27 2007
Would it surprise you to learn that the so-far 5 percent selloff in the Dow Industrials has done almost no technical damage to the hourly chart, let alone the daily? Check out the graph below if you don’t believe it. As you can see, at the nadir of yesterday’s emetic 450-point plunge, the Indoos had yet to... » Read more
July 26 2007
When we warned recently that Apple shares might fall to as low as $134 before rallying to a potentially important high near $153, we never imagined the stock would hit both of those numbers in a single day. But it very nearly did yesterday, when stellar earnings drove bears into a short-covering panic in after-hours trading. The stock had spent most of the day struggling to recoup... » Read more
July 25 2007
We keep repeating the mantra that “Something Has Changed.” Exactly what has changed, from a technical standpoint, is discussed below, as well as some reasons why we are quite certain now that the Fed will loosen, and soon. (Sayonara, US$!) Meanwhile, talk about ugly!... » Read more
July 24 2007
Is anyone else creeped out by the fact that financial stocks have failed to get in gear with the supposed bull market? We experienced this ominous divergence first-hand yesterday bottom-fishing in the shares of Wachovia [NYSE symbol: WB]. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been... » Read more
July 23 2007
No sooner do we get done trash-talking Google than we hear they may be jockeying to take over the country’s (the world’s?!) cell phone business. If such an ambitious coup sounds implausible, click here for a persuasive... » Read more
July 20 2007
We gave up trying to pick the Mother of All Tops when the Dow Industrial Average blew past a major target of ours at 13045 last April. As early as 2004, one could have seen this bullish explosion coming when the blue chip index tripped a major “buy” signal of ours at exactly 10542. The... » Read more
July 19 2007
It took the XAU Gold & Silver Index four months to reach a Hidden Pivot resistance at 152.98 and only two hours to demolish it. How bullish is that? Very. We generally try to tone down our precious metals forecasts, since bullion’s rallies over the last year-and-a-half have done little but disappoint. Indeed, for all but the most... » Read more
July 18 2007
Crude oil at $100 a barrel? Someone wanted to know whether we were joking when we broached the possibility yesterday in the Rick’s Picks chat room. From a Hidden Pivot standpoint, prospects over the next few months are not quite that scary, since the highest target... » Read more
July 17 2007
I was away from my office and the Rick’s Picks chat room Monday, returning from a weekend with a college buddy, Peter Ricciardelli, who lives in Telluride. The loop that I drove took in some of the most scenic vistas in the Rockies. On Saturday morning, I had dropped my son off for a week of... » Read more
July 16 2007
In the column I wrote years ago for the San Francisco Examiner, I once conjured up “Monsters from the Id,” a reference to the 1950s sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. The film, based on Shakespeare’s Tempest,... » Read more
July 13 2007
Talk about irrational exuberance! If yesterday’s seismic eruption of giddiness on Wall Street had happened in, say, Kabul, we’d have seen Taliban revelers launching bottle rockets from the rooftops and dancing horas in the streets. We searched in vain for an explanation but found only a... » Read more
July 12 2007
Speaking as a gold bug with a gimlet eye, it may be a good time to ratchet down our expectations, seeing the glass as half-empty rather than half-full. Let’s start with the XAU chart below, which I recently trotted out in support of a 5.5% rally forecast. When you look at the chart, do you see a bullish impulse leg that has rocketed... » Read more
July 11 2007
We bailed out of our short position in Apple early yesterday, sidestepping the punishment the stock was to inflict on bears later in the day. Although the Dow Industrials got socked for a 150-point loss, Apple was up as much as $4 intraday. This would not have surprised anyone who parsed our commentary here the night before: “End of day action in AAPL shares,” we wrote, “suggests... » Read more
July 10 2007
Our small, short position in Apple has produced a paper gain of more than $1,000 since Friday, when we advised the trade. We used a Hidden Pivot resistance at 133.43 that appears to have been well worth the wait, since it came within 35 cents of nailing the so-far all-time high in the stock, 133.78. The pivot also anticipated a doozy of a selloff – a pullback of nearly $5, or... » Read more
July 09 2007
Searching billions of web pages, we were unable to find even a single stock chart showing the spectacular ascent of RCA prior to the 1929 Crash. (The one shown at bottom will give you a rough idea, though.) Our hunch is that the final, manic leap of “Radio,” as it was popularly known, would bear a striking resemblance to the world-beating parabola... » Read more
July 05 2007
Stocks marched patriotically higher on Tuesday as anticipated, but the rally was not quite strong enough to get us short intraday as we’d recommended. Our bullish targets for the Mini-S&P, August Crude and the QQQs will remain valid when the markets open and begin to feign activity today and Friday, but we should be extra cautious about laying out shorts that we would not in... » Read more
July 03 2007
Remember the joke about Russian workers and their Communist bosses? “We pretend we’re working and they pretend they’re paying us.”? Now it’s the American worker’s turn to play make-believe. With July 4th falling on a Wednesday, this week was over last Friday as far as U.S. productivity is concerned. On Wall Street, the bulls won’t even have to pretend they’re working.... » Read more
July 02 2007
When the Mini-Dow futures broke above 13600 on Friday not long after the opening bell, we put out a bulletin in the chat room predicting they would reach a minimum 13680 shortly thereafter. The initial A-B thrust looked pretty powerful from a Hidden Pivot perspective, surpassing no fewer than three previous peaks that had been made earlier in the... » Read more
June 29 2007
CNBC’s breathless coverage of the iPhone debut reminds me of the fawning treatment they gave Krispy Kreme a few years back when the ill-fated donut vendor went public. I can recall Joe Kernen in particular effusing over the company’s supposedly limitless prospects as though KK were selling a cheap cure for cancer. More like a cure for fitness. In retrospect, we wonder how Kernen... » Read more
June 28 2007
Here’s a modest proposal: Let’s flush Paris Hilton into oblivion. A beautiful, crazy, dream? I don’t think so. This can work. Let me explain. No turd is so big that it won’t flush. A little stool softener, and Paris will swirl quietly out of our lives. I promise. Ridding ourselves of the world’s most celebrated fellator is going to be much easier than it sounds. Didn’t... » Read more
June 27 2007
Comex Gold has been moving with near-absolute fidelity to our Hidden Pivot targets lately, so there is little reason for subscribers to agonize over where the “Auggies” may be headed next. The answer, unfortunately but obviously, is lower. But the good news is that this particular phase of... » Read more
June 26 2007
For a few hours on Monday it looked as though the Dow Industrials were on their way to headline gains. Up 130 points in the early going, the blue-chip average appeared unstoppable, even when crude oil quotes began creeping back up toward the $70 level around mid-session. But that was before nervousness over the mounting debacle in subprime mortgages supposedly overtook investors,... » Read more
June 25 2007
After Friday’s dispiriting performance on Wall Street, we’re starting to think something actually has changed. But has it? Have we entered a bear market? We asked that question here two weeks ago but decided that any attempt to answer it would be premature. Give it another six months, we said,... » Read more
June 22 2007
August Gold slid nearly $10 lower yesterday before gaining traction two ticks above our minimum downside target, 650.30. Had the carnage continued even $1.00 further it would have signaled a possible fall to a Hidden Pivot support well beneath these levels. (See the... » Read more
June 21 2007
We’ve been monitoring the T-bonds’ vital signs closely lately, looking for evidence that yields may have peaked, at least for the time being. Unfortunately, it looks as though any respite for borrowers, particularly mortgage borrowers, will be short-lived.... » Read more
June 20 2007
For lurkers who are curious about what goes on inside Rick’s Picks, I’ve reprinted yesterday’s actual Touts below, along with intraday updates and charts. Surely you didn’t think the... » Read more
June 19 2007
Yesterday’s brain-congealing tedium held the S&Ps within a three-point range for more than five hours, daring traders to take their eye off the ball for even a moment. But if past is precedent, we have to assume the whole boring day will turn out to have been a consolidation and that stocks will be pounding higher as usual when trading resumes this morning. Or is that scenario... » Read more
June 18 2007
Precise forecasting does not necessarily make for successful trading, as the two examples, both from Friday’s Rick’s Picks, make clear. In the first instance, we used price action... » Read more
June 15 2007
Stocks have recouped only about two-thirds of last week's losses so far, but I wouldn’t bet against a finishing stroke today that evens the score. It’s Friday Follies day, after all, and that is typically when zany, crazy opportunism reaches its apogee on Wall Street. Perhaps that’s why the broad averages went into a holding pattern yesterday after rallying sharply for about the... » Read more
June 14 2007
Yamana shares didn’t exactly soar after we bought them yesterday (see chart below), but because we got in a penny off the intraday low, we can afford to be patient. Here’s the recommendation exactly as it appeared in the Touts section of... » Read more
June 13 2007
I reaffirmed my long-term bullish outlook for Gold here yesterday, but without preparing you for the worst over the next 2-3 weeks. With August Gold currently trading around $651, I am now projecting a decline to at least $638, a Hidden Pivot target that will remain valid as long as the futures don’t rally above $679 first. If correct, that would imply a fall of about 2% from... » Read more
June 12 2007
The chart below shows why, although our near-term outlook for Gold is negative, we view longer-term prospects more optimistically. Our analysis hinges on an elemental rule that anyone can easily learn to apply. The rule states, simply, that new uptrends or downtrends begin with “impulse legs”... » Read more
June 11 2007
Some bimbo at Fox News opined the other day that Paris Hilton had helped make this a better world, but we’d rank the It Girl’s contribution to humanity somewhere between that of malaria and dwarf-tossing. Why on God’s Earth are the news media so obsessed with her? It surely isn’t because the public can’t get enough of her simpering smile... » Read more
June 08 2007
Is the bull market over? Ask us again in six months, since anyone who would even deign to answer that question is blowing smoke. Even so, it is growing increasingly difficult to ignore the evidence that the bull has started to crack. Yesterday, for instance, the S&Ps recorded their biggest drop in nearly three months. That in itself is no catastrophe. But from a Hidden Pivot... » Read more
June 07 2007
We’ve gone disdainfully against the trend twice so far this week, risking bupkus while buying shares of Yamana Gold and shorting Fannie Mae. Yamana is a favorite in the Rick’s Picks chat room and gets hyped daily, but it had been a while since we last... » Read more
June 06 2007
The Dow Industrials fell 81 points yesterday, but we view the relatively light damage as a sign of strength, considering the news. Profit warnings were issued by several retailers, and Helicopter Ben was on the tape with yet more “worries” about “inflation.” For a guy supposedly steeped in the lessons of the Great Depression, it’s amazing that the ongoing collapse of the housing... » Read more
June 05 2007
Our targets for both the Dow and the QQQs are well above current levels (see the Rick’s Picks archive as well as the “Actionable Advice” list for precise numbers), so we’ll be looking for buying opportunities in the coming days and weeks as we wait for bearish prospects to ripen. Keep in mind that our goal is not to catch the Mother of... » Read more
June 04 2007
Let me reiterate my strong conviction that GOOG is not the world-class company that gung-ho investors seem to believe it is. As we know, the firm proved early on that it is morally gutless by caving to the Chinese on issues of censorship. (So, recently, did Yahoo! See below.)... » Read more
May 31 2007
The chart below shows why we are dismissive of those, even Nobel laureates, who would argue that the U.S. economy is “healthy.” Clearly, household savings, a crucial economic component, has not kept pace with the allegedly robust economic conditions that are all but universally believed to obtain. Mr. Greenspan et al. would argue – have... » Read more
May 30 2007
ABC led the news Tuesday night with a tuberculosis scare. Tuberculosis!? The last time I can remember anyone making a fuss about tuberculosis was in Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain, which is set in a sanitarium. Perhaps Tuesday was just a slow... » Read more
May 29 2007
Seasonality usually romps on Wall Street ahead of Memorial Day weekend, but this year the party was relatively subdued. As much might be said of the Rick’s Picks chat room, where things quieted down around mid-morning as regulars departed, presumably for exotic getaway spots around the world. I’d offered a few trades for Friday in the... » Read more
May 25 2007
In featuring the outlandishly bullish thoughts of Nobel laureate Vernon Smith here yesterday, I said that it would be churlish of me to take issue with the economist, given that a rampaging stock market has placed the burden of proof squarely on the bears for the moment. Yesterday, however, stocks reversed 200 points to the negative, so it’s probably as good a time as any to try... » Read more
May 24 2007
The Wall Street Journal pulled out all the stops yesterday, hard-selling a bull market that we continue to view as an episode of mass hysteria. In the lead story, the Journal trotted out a Nobel laureate, no less, to say in so many words that this time it really is different. Could this renowned egghead be onto something?... » Read more
May 23 2007
With a U.S. recession just a statistical heartbeat away, any sane observer might conclude that the stock market is staging for a spectacular plunge. In fact, it is within mere hundredths of a point of opening up a lush new pasture for bulls. The chart below shows why this is so according to the Hidden Pivot system, the analytical method I use to avoid letting my innate bearishness... » Read more
May 22 2007
Gold has chastised and disappointed bulls so many times since last May that we want to be quite certain of our indicators before sounding the all-clear. Unfortunately, the coldly mechanical Hidden Pivot method that we use to forecast price trends has mostly glum things to say about bullion at the moment. Yes, that could change in as little as a day or two if certain things were to... » Read more
May 21 2007
Like all rally targets before it, our DJIA objective at 13587 gave way on Friday, inundated by a flood tide of buying that lifted the Indoos to yet one more all-time high. Paradoxically, and despite the market’s strength, the short I’d advised from 13587 would have been an easy winner, if only for little while, since our target came within a single... » Read more
May 18 2007
The Indoos sputtered out yesterday a tad shy of a promising Hidden Pivot target at 13538. A sign of perilous fatigue? Hard to say at the moment, but if the blue chip average kisses that number as the week draws to a close, we’d be mighty tempted to take a short position over the weekend.... » Read more
May 17 2007
We left some money on the table yesterday in the shares of Goldman Sachs (GS) but still managed to extract a theoretical gain of $500 from a small overnight trade in the stock. I’d recommended buying Goldman shares on Tuesday at 224.27, a Hidden Pivot support that missed catching the exact low of the day by a single penny. The next day began delightfully, with the stock opening on... » Read more
May 16 2007
When I last saw my old buddy Zane Binder, Knight-Ridder was syndicating his car reviews, he was driving a $90,000 BMW loaner, and he had just started to dabble in put and call options. Lo, he’s become not merely an armchair expert, but a veritable put-and-call whiz, employing money-making strategies that most stockbrokers would never... » Read more
May 15 2007
The QQQQ trade recommended in Monday’s Touts worked out so perfectly that I want to review the steps we took to get ourselves risklessly short “the market” for the next five weeks. By day’s end, we had legged into bearish June 46-45 put spreads at no cost. That means that if “the Cubes” are trading below 45 when our options expire on June... » Read more
May 14 2007
Here’s a headline in search of a story, from Friday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal: “Retail Sales Slide Fuels Concern.” We had to read the article twice before we were able to determine just who it is that is “concerned.” Not investors, for sure. With the Dow Industrial Average and other... » Read more
May 11 2007
For those of you who still awaken each morning with somehow undiminished enthusiasm for “buying the dips” in gold, I’ve included my rock-bottom price forecast in Friday’s Touts. Yesterday, I did some abortive bottom-fishing myself in the June Comex, nibbling at Hidden Pivots that lay, respectively, at 672.10 and... » Read more
May 10 2007
We’ve seen one Hidden Pivot rally target after the next demolished in recent months, even if some of them withstood the battering for a while. Now, for the record, we proffer yesterday’s 1519.00 high in the Mini-S&P as yet one more such enticing opportunity to get short. This we did, late in the day and with no great expectation of getting rich -- only of picking an entry spot... » Read more
May 08 2007
Millions who watched the Kentucky Derby on Saturday would agree that it lived up to its billing as the most exciting two minutes in sports. Street Sense, a 4-to1 shot at post-time, covered the distance in a little more than two minute, delivering more thrills, probably, than the last three Superbowls combined. Jockey Calvin Borel added... » Read more
May 07 2007
Millions who watched the Kentucky Derby on Saturday would agree that it lived up to its billing as the most exciting two minutes in sports. Street Sense, a 4-to1 shot at post-time, covered the distance in a little more than two minute, delivering more thrills, probably, than the last three Superbowls combined. Jockey Calvin Borel added... » Read more
May 07 2007
The absolutely highest high I could have predicted for the Dow Industrial Average was exceeded by 20 points on Friday. Do I care? Less than you might think, actually. But rather than impose on your reserve of forgiveness with the usual technical post-mortem and yet another Mother-of-All-Tops hidden pivot, let me focus for a moment on a timely topic that has justified my publishing... » Read more
May 03 2007
“Buy Costa Rican real estate, short movie theaters!” That is the substance of a note I’d scrawled on a memo pad, intending to share with you, dear readers, some potentially rewarding investment themes of the day. Peter Lynch would approve, since both of these ideas come right from the gut. Movie theaters first. I know something about... » Read more
May 02 2007
It has been mere days since gasoline prices here in Colorado rocketed above $3, so news that Ford and GM suffered a catastrophic sales decline in April hardly comes as a surprise. With gas prices predicted to reach $4 here within the next few months – which translates to nearly $5 in California --... » Read more
May 01 2007
We’d been looking to short Goldman Sachs (GS) and the Mini-S&P futures, among others, but both plummeted yesterday from highs just a tad shy of their respective rally targets. In Goldman, our price objective was 228.40, a Hidden Pivot where a potentially important top seemed like an enticing prospect. However, as you can see in the... » Read more
April 30 2007
Like a growing number of Americans, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to believe that the U.S. will be able to claim victory when our troops finally pull out of Iraq. The troop surge was supposed to give us a way to nurture and solidify the support of the Iraqi people for an elected government, and to make it possible for “good” Iraqis to ostracize their violent brethren. But... » Read more
April 27 2007
The Dow Industrials have risen on 18 of the last 20 trading days – not too shabby, especially if you’ve been on the right side of the move. You’d have to be an old-timer to remember the last time that happened, since it was in…1929. Of course, we’ve seen many a comparison to 1929 fall by the wayside as shares have risen, and continued... » Read more
April 26 2007
A bullish stampede made short work of our years-old Dow target at 13045 yesterday, telegraphing even higher prices in the days and perhaps weeks ahead. The target was intended not as kamikaze number for permabears, but rather as a logical place to short aggressively using a tight stop-loss. This we did, laying out shorts not only in the mini-Dow... » Read more
April 25 2007
Has the stock market been scaling the proverbial wall of worry -- or has it simply gone “mental” in a so-far bloodlessly postal kind of way? Investors’ apparent obliviousness yesterday to dreadful numbers from the housing industry should have left no doubt about the answer: This time, it... » Read more
April 24 2007
I put out a fleeting buy signal yesterday on Sirius Satellite Radio after a chart alert I’d set earlier this year warned that the stock was approaching a long-term target at $2.87. SIRI shares were hovering closer to $4.00 when the forecast was made, and although the implied 30 percent drop seemed like overkill, we’ve learned never to second-guess our technical indicators,... » Read more
April 20 2007
Below, from our friend Steven Fair, is a patriot’s passionate response to Thursday’s featured essay here on “gun nuts.” A wildlife... » Read more
April 19 2007
The “Zimbabwe Effect” continued to rule yesterday on Wall Street, setting up the Dow Industrial Average for an almost certain push to new all-time highs in the coming days. Recall that Zimbabwe’s stock market reportedly has been the hottest in the world, notwithstanding the fact that the nation itself is one of the worst basket cases on... » Read more
April 18 2007
I am hardly what you would call a gun-nut, although as a summer camper I did participate avidly for a few years in the NRA’s target-shooting program for kids. Later, just out of college, intending to buy a handgun, I applied for a permit under New Jersey’s very stringent rules. I needed the local police chief to vouch for my good character, and my fingerprints were taken and sent... » Read more
April 17 2007
Toward the end of 2004, when the Dow Industrials touched a bullish tripwire at 10542, we raised our long-term target to 13045. This very important Hidden Pivot resistance has always seemed as good a place as any for bears to get short aggressively and dig in their heels. But when the blue chip average dove in early March after hitting record highs 250... » Read more
April 16 2007
A trading alert in Rick’s Picks on Thursday morning caught the start of a $15 rally in Comex Gold to the exact tick, but it’s... » Read more