Navigating Rick's Picks
Rick’s Picks is the official website of Rick Ackerman’s Hidden Pivot Method. It is an online service for traders from novice to expert. On the pages of this website are the tools and information to teach a member to become a skilled and successful trader. If you are overwhelmed by technical jargon the first time you enter the Trading Room or attempt to follow a trading ‘tout’, don’t worry. It is our goal to offer novices at least a few easy trades to more than cover the cost of a subscription while you learn. The following information is a path to follow to get the most out of the website and courses to become a successful trader. It is worth you time to read the whole document. Download Navigating Rick’s Picks as a PDF
- Log in to Rick’s Picks. Make sure you are logged into Rick’s Picks using your user name and password. You should see the menu below if you are logged in correctly. This is the ‘touts’ page. Displayed are Rick’s trading forecasts and, often, actionable advice (touts) for some of the most popular many symbols. You should always go to this page to see what Rick is recommending.
The ‘Current Trades’ tab calls up explicitly detailed recommendations and forecasts from Rick for stocks, bonds, precious metals, currencies, indexes, ETFs and options. Accompanying each tout is a thumbnail chart that can be enlarged by clicking on it. Clicking on the tout symbol will also expand the chart.
All forecasts and trades are based on Rick’s proprietary Hidden Pivot Method. You can use any electronic platform to do the trades. As you work with and follow the touts, you’ll quickly come to understand Rick’s terminology. Fresh touts are normally published on Sunday evening, giving subscribers time to include the information in time for the start of the week’s trading. Touts are constantly updated during the week, generating an email notice to subscribers.
There are just a few terms to get straight, and most of them are tied to a simple ABCD pattern. The A-B segment is the impulse leg, B-C is the correction/retracement/pullback, and C-D is the follow-through leg. There are just two Hidden Pivots: the ‘D’ target of the pattern, and ‘p’, the midpoint of the C-D leg. Lower-case abcd is used to denoted corrective patterns. Price action at ‘p’ is usually sufficient to tell us everything we need to know for trading and forecasting purposes. You should pay close attention to it, because ‘p’ holds the key to Rick’s system.
Touts are updated whenever warranted. The italicized updates are time-stamped, and the indicated stock price will correspond to the time the update was posted. If the tout contains explicit advice for taking action, it will be preceded by a ‘$’ sign; if there is an open position, there will be a ‘+’ sign. Upside ‘D’ targets are in boldface green; downside, in boldface brown. The same colors in light-face indicate upside and downside ‘p’.
Visit the chat rooms! You can enter either of two discussion rooms on the site by clicking ‘Trading Room’ or ‘Coffee House’ up top. You’ll be prompted to create a handle that identifies you in the room. It can be up to 12 characters long. Some colorful examples: Catman, dano, krimso, TKNeo, Silverlady, traderman and so on. Catman is the handle for the website manager. He is one of the moderators of the rooms besides Rick. To change your chat room handle, there is a Change Your Handle link in each room. It is at the top of the Users Online column. A list of all traders who are signed in is shown in that column.
Both rooms look and operate the same. They draw some of the best traders in the world, and the discussion continues 24/7. Quite a few of them are Hidden Pivot experts, or ‘Pivoteers’, and that is what makes the rooms extraordinary in the trading world: Everyone is on the same page, technically speaking. They are also helpful, polite and friendly, as you will soon discover.
In the Trading Room, users are encouraged to provide timely, actionable ideas. Tune to the discussion closely and you are certain to find a trading style tailored to your appetite for risk. Some who post ideas will be looking to make $100-$200 day, but there are others who on a very good day have been known to make $100,000-$200,000. The Coffee House is more of a conversational free-for-all, and you’ll be astounded at how wide-ranging and knowledgeable the discussion is. You can easily jump back and forth between the rooms by clicking on the appropriate link.
Follow the posts closely and you will soon begin to find opportunities for yourself. When there is an actionable update to a tout, the first place you might see it is in the Trading Room. When something particularly interesting is happening in the markets, Rick will sometimes hold an impromptu ‘chalk talk’, announcing it in the room and simultaneously sending out an email notification and link to these online events.
A key feature of Rick’s Picks is the spirit of helpfulness that pervades the rooms. The Trading Room is a great place to ask questions, and Rick encourages everyone to pitch in with answers, especially when he is not around. The emphasis is always on timely, tradeable advice, including set-ups that even novices with small accounts can attempt. However, those who post plenty of tradeable information get some slack to go off-topic. Post a few winners and you’ve earned the right to explain why you prefer German beer over American.
Posts of up to 500 characters are typed as shown below and displayed in the room by clicking ‘Publish’. Your post will appear within a few seconds, and you’ll have 12 minutes to change or edit it by clicking the pencil next to your name. We ask that you be polite, friendly and civil.
The chat room Help Page offers further details on how to use the rooms. It also provides instructions for setting up an ABCD Hidden Pivot tool on various trading platforms. This information is accessible under Subscriber Benefits as well: Creating an HP Pattern on Popular Platforms.
Here’s a snippet of discussion from the Trading Room to give you a feel for what goes on there:
3. Take a trading course to up your game. You can take numerous courses on Ricks Picks that will enable you to spot timely opportunities and to use price targets, impulse legs and midpoint pivots to set up trades yourself. Here are some of the current titles:
- Fundamentals of The Hidden Pivot Method: a brief introduction
- ‘Mechanical’ Trade Set-Ups – this tactic is our workhorse, simple but powerful
- Camouflage Trading – reduces risk drastically; it can be used alone or with any other system
- The Hidden Pivot Course –Details six trade-entry methods and covers the basics in great detail
You should take Fundamentals of the Hidden Pivot Method as a pre-requisite for the other courses, and then ‘Mechanical’ and ‘Camouflage’ sessions to learn the tactics you’ll need to pull the trigger with confidence.
Fundamentals is suitable for novices and experts alike, since there are some simple tricks that are unique to the Hidden Pivot Method that even experienced traders will benefit from. Fashioning ‘dynamic’ and ‘impulsive’ trailing stops, for instance, and using impulse legs to spot trend changes the instant they occur. Once you’ve watched this recording, you’ll be ready to reap all of the benefits from your Rick’s Picks membership and the chat-room, where money-making secrets are shared round-the-clock.
There’s not a better first step you can take into the world of successful trading than the Fundamentals intro. The ideas are easy to learn, and it will save you the trouble of poring over charts for endless hours. You’ll quickly learn…
- How simple ABCD patterns can help you understand the fundamental rhythms of markets well enough to exploit them
- How to manage risk so that pulling the trigger is no longer nerve-wracking and downright scary
- How to use two simple but powerful tools – midpoint pivots and impulse legs
- How to get the most out of the Trading Room, where some of the best traders around share timely ideas
‘Mechanical’ Trade Set-Ups
You’ll be astounded when you see how well these trades work…
- Put it to use instantly. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll be able to trade whenever and as often as you please – with as little as $2,000 in your account.
- Set risk management on autopilot. Once you are in the trade, following two easy rules will allow you to take partial profits like a pro, and avoid getting stopped out with the amateurs.
- Incredibly versatile. Trade any vehicle at any time of day or night. Scalp in and out of a $3,000 stock like Amazon with a small account and no fear of slippage.
- Minimize risk. It turns out that the best place to get into a trade is when other traders are scared half to death. This technique is designed to get you aboard when they are diving for cover. You will see how often mechanical set-ups catch the exact low of a trampoline bounce.
- A proven strategy. Visit the Rick’s Picks chat room and see for yourself. Subscribers are using and sharing mechanical set-ups all day long to make trading easier and more fun than they ever dreamed possible.
‘Camouflage’ Trading
Reduce entry risk to literal small change…
Stop trying to catch a falling piano. Learn instead to use tiny patterns on the lesser charts to get aboard much bigger patterns with practically no risk. That is the secret of ‘camouflage’, and it can be used as a stand-alone technique or in conjunction with any trading system or tactic that generates an entry signal. And even if things go awry, ‘camouflage’ will allow you to exit the trade quickly and painlessly.
Find great trades in ‘boring’ spots where others have been lulled to sleep. The one-minute bar chart offers non-stop opportunities during the trading day. With ‘camo’ set-ups, you can trade any vehicle, including bitcoin, at will while others are either asleep at the wheel or too scared to act.
Use this sure-fire trick to reduce entry risk by as much as 98% whenever you trade. Using ‘camouflage’ entries, it’s possible to trade volatile killers like Tesla, Chipotle and Google while risking as little as $2 to $4 per share.
The Hidden Pivot Course – ‘Classic’ or ‘Flagship’ versions
The Hidden Pivot Course combines all the previously mentioned courses and much more. The Classic version comprises six one-hour modules and is the original course taught by Rick. It goes into Hidden Pivot basics, including visual techniques for spotting winning patterns, in great depth. The Flagship version covers the Hidden Pivot Method in a somewhat more condensed form, but with emphasis on the latest trade-entry tactics. Take either course and…
- You’ll learn how to spot hidden patterns that accurately telegraph trends and price targets.
- You will end-run the bewildering complexity of Elliot Wave Theory, a somewhat similar system.
- The system’s rigorous discipline will help you develop trading instincts, aka ‘horse sense’, over time.
- Spot trend changes ahead of the herd, the instant they occur.
- You’ll start pulling the trigger with little fear of significant loss.
- Hundreds of Hidden Pivot charts annotated by Rick will be yours. They will train your eye to see winning patterns at a glance.
- You’ll possess a completely visual means of setting up trades without having to ‘do the math’.
- You’ll receive a quarterly subscription to Wednesday tutorial sessions where Rick identifies trades in real time and ‘forces’ them so that you can see his thought process in action.
Now you know how to get the most from Rick’s Picks, a service designed to put you on a path to successful trading. Sign up now, and be sure to say hello when you come in the chat room for the first time.