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Speculators Rev Stupidity to Redline

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?...
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A 12-Year-Old On a Hot Streak

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...
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Dear Subscribers...

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...
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Complacency Still Abounds

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...
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Apple Mocks Market Theory

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...
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Talk About Ugly!

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!...
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Bank-Stock Lag Is 1929-Creepy

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...
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No More Trashing Google Prospects

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...
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Indoos at 14,000 Changes Nothing

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...
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Gold Leaps To Life...

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...
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$100 Crude? Not Quite...

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...
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Scenic Colorado

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...
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Monsters From the Id

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,...
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Scrambling Up Everest

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...
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Gloomy Gus's Take on Gold

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...
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Of Dirt Bags And Weasels

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...
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Short Apple And Loving It

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...
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Shorting Apple

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...
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Rally Too Weak To Get Us Short

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...
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Stocks Climb Patriotically

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....
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Yet More Signs Bull Is Wounded

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...
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iPhone Mania!

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...
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Here's My Plan To Be Rid of Paris

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...
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Gold Looks Very Predictable Here

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...
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Subprime Reactor May Be Leaking

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,...
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Fuzzy-Wuzzy Bear a-Borning?

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,...
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Bearish Tripwire For Comex Gold

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...
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Bond Bounce Lacks Guts

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....
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A Peek Inside Rick's Picks

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...
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When Realtors Go on the Dole...

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...
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No System Is Perfect...

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...
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A Lull Before Friday Follies?

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...
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Stocks Poised To Explode?

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...
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2% Further Fall Likely for Gold

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...
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Why Gold Bugs Needn't Fear...

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”...
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We'll Always Have Paris...

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...
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Something Has Changed

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...
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Flouting Trends For Fun & Profit

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...
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Sell-Off Mild Considering...

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...
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To Ride the Bull, Foolishness Helps

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...
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Why Google Sucks

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.)...
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'Robust' Economy An Ignorant Myth

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...
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A Slow News Day

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...
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Stocks Cruise Into Holiday

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...
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Bullish Egghead Off His Rocker?

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...
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A Permabear Goes Zen...

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?...
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S&Ps Inch Toward Revitalizing Bull

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...
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Avoiding False Signals in Gold

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...
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Tulip-O-Mania On a Global Scale

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...
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Drafting Big Rigs To Save on Fuel

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....
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This Stock Loves Hidden Pivots...

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...
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What Deflation? My Old Pal Asks

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...
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QQQ Put Spread Cost Us Nothing

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...
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Stocks Predicting Consumer Binge?

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...
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Gold Just Shy Of Juicy Low

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...
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The Rich Have... More Leverage!

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...
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Having Gold Fall Into One's Lap...

May 09 2007
  Finding ways to buy gold without risking much is proving to be more art than science, as yesterday’s experience...
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Derby Packed A True Thrill

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...
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Derby Delivered A True Thrill

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...
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Britney Is Back!

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...
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"End Is Near!" Yeah, Sure...

May 04 2007
  For die-hard bears like ourselves, one of the most useful features of the Hidden Pivot system is that it is incapable of...
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Why Multiplexes Are On Way Out

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...
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Gas Guzzlers Hit the Skids

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 --...
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Permabear 'Secret': Take Some Profits

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...
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A Gimlet-Eyed View Of Iraq

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...
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Nostalgia Trips Of the Future...

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...
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Bulls Thrash 13045 Target

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...
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Street Has Gone Postal

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...
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Stern's Ship Sinking Fast

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,...
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When a Trade Works Perfectly

April 23 2007
  (Click on chart to...
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A Patriot's View Of Gun Laws...

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...
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Madness Pushes Dow to the Brink

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...
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'Gun-Nuts' Versus A Nut With a Gun

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...
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U.S. Stocks Ape Zimbabwe Model

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...
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Number to Watch In Gold: 693.20

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...
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A Night of Hell For a PC User

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Fed Really Avert Deflation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yuletide Nuttiness ...and $2500 Gold!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 24 2006
We’ve been monitoring Gold’s vital signs very closely lately, since that may be the only way an investor could hope to jump back in without fear of getting maim