Rick Ackerman

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently raised his forecast for rates on the Ten-Year Note, currently trading just below 3%, to 5%. He'd predicted a rally to 4% back in May but now thinks the bull market in stocks could run for another two or three years, putting additional upward pressure on long-term yields. For its part, Rick's Picks has told subscribers to expect a push soon above the 3.11% peak recorded back in May -- a peak we had foreseen five months earlier when the Ten-Year Note was paying around 2.35%. We offered no specific target at the time but will now: 3.32%, as shown in today's chart (see inset). It's hard to square Dimon's interest-rate forecast with the notion that the bull market in stocks has a few more years to run. Our gut feeling is that anything above 3.25% will asphyxiate the U.S. economy and send it into recession. The housing sector is already in a sharp downturn as reported here last week., and even a small turn of the interest-rate screw could asphyxiate it, along with auto leases. This would be a double whammy for the stock market, since mortgage rates have been held for a long time at levels that allow Americans to buy more home than they can afford.  Similarly, car leases are structured so that we can drive more car than we can afford. The silver lining here turns out to be an unappealing scenario:  rates go no higher than 3.50-4.00, but only because the U.S. economy has nosedived. _______ UPDATE (August 19, 5:07 p.m.): The uptrend stalled at 3.106% and in the three weeks since has receded to the middle of the 2.72% - 3.11% range in which rates have fluctuated for the last six months. My bias is neutral for

When the Dow Industrials rallied 400 point last Thursday, I wrote here that it must be predicting a settlement of the trade dispute between the U.S. and China.  I went on to forecast that the prospect of improved trade relations would send the blue chip average significantly higher, into the range 27k-28k, implying a rally from current levels of as much as 2300 points. Lo, Saturday's edition of the Wall Street Journal bore me out with this headline: 'China, U.S. Chart End to Impasse'. There is good news in this, but one possible trouble spot. First the bright side: A summit meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is scheduled for November, following midlevel talks next week between U.S. and Chinese officials to lay the groundwork. This means that, according to the old Wall Street adage "buy the rumor, sell the news," the stock market has several months in which to rally on speculation that the two leaders will reach and agreement on trade that changes the status quo for the better. But if ever there were "news" to sell, it would be a rosy agreement on tariffs between the two countries, since, at that point, it would be hard to imagine the news getting much sunnier.  And that's why I will be looking to short stocks on the eve of the summit. However, I'd still have to concede that, over the long haul, if Trump is successful in putting global trade on fairer footing, as he has already done with Europe, it would boost the case of those who have been predicting a rise in the Dow to 35,000 or higher.

With a drumroll and a little more fanfare than usual, I asserted here the other day that the stock market was due for a nasty drubbing — a comeuppance for the hubris that has goosed the FAANG stocks into outer space. But if Wednesday’s humdrum retracement is the best that sellers can do, we permabears are going to have to resume a familiar position  — i.e., bent from the waist, hands gripping our ankles. When I say that price action was humdrum, I mean mild and predictable. Although the S&Ps were down almost 40 points in the early going, they’d recouped half of it by the final bell. As for being predictable, judge from the chart (see inset). As you can see, the intraday low occurred almost exactly at the ‘D’ target of the pattern shown. Sellers were docile, orderly — and completely winded just 90 minutes after the session began. As I continue to remind subscribers, the bull market, now celebrating its tenth year, won’t end until portfolio managers wake up one morning in a cold sweat, asking themselves, What on earth have I done?? Until this epiphany comes, all they’ll need do to maintain the illusion of control is buy shares in the same half-dozen stocks that have buttered their bread for nearly a decade. _______ UPDATE (August 16, 5:48 p.m. EDT): Su-prize su-prize. Bears panicked to get 'em back, lifting the futures nearly 50 points from the lows recorded 24 hours earlier.  Now they are bound for the 2874.25 target shown in this chart.  A pullback first to the green line would trip a mechanical buy signal there, stop 2802.75. _______ UPDATE (August 19, 4:59 p.m.): The pullback bottomed at 2835.00, nowhere near out stingy 'mechanical' bid, before the futures took off. The 2874.25 target remains valid

AAPL, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, came within 50 cents of the 214.30 target I'd drum-rolled here a couple of weeks ago, when the stock was $15 lower. Ordinarily, I'd suggest shorting it at current levels, especially to subscribers who made some bucks enroute to the target. But on second look, I'm convinced the stock will rise at least another 6% before it reaches its full, juicy ripeness as a short. Short-term, this has bullish implications for the stock market, since a monster like AAPL cannot rally 6% without pulling the broad averages higher. It will have help from another bear-baiter, AMZN, which has yet to achieve the 1936.21 target I sent out to subscribers weeks ago. If the Dow rallies correspondingly into the range 27k-28k, it could only be for one reason: China and Trump have struck a bargain on tariffs and trade. Indeed, we should expect this if today's 400-point rally in the Dow turns out to be the start of a more significant surge.

As my friend the late Malcolm Watts used to say, if you're going to try to catch a falling piano, wait until it has bounced three times.  This glue-horse-of-a-stock hasn't bounced in a year-and-a-half, and there's no particular reason to think it will do so from the 0.94 bid we patiently entered weeks ago. Accordingly, I will suggest canceling the trade and waiting until the stock falls to the 0.50 midpoint Hidden Pivot shown (see inset) before we step in. Granted, at 0.94 we'd have sidestepped a bloodbath that has cut the stock in half in just the last month. But that would be nothing to gloat over if NGD turns out to be on its way down to 0.50. At that level it would be either a decent buy -- "A bargain!" -- or a good bet to fall to zero.  Accordingly, I'll recommend bidding 0.52 for as many shares as you can afford to see become worthless. No Mere 'Hole in the Ground' New Gold is a company with substantial assets in the Western Hemisphere and Australia, so it's not as though we'd be buying the proverbial hole in the ground with a liar standing above it. On the other hand, bullion and precious metal assets are currently being valued by most investors as though they were garbage. Why reward them for this egregious misjudgment? There is no urgency here, nor should we feel remorseful if the stock reverses from somewhere above our lowered bid and heads for the ozone. That is sufficiently unlikely, in my view, to warrant taking a shot from these levels._______ UPDATE (Sep 12, 1:35 p.m.): I suggested bidding 0.70 in the chat room this morning, based on this pattern. Coincidentally, that was just moments  before the stock took its biggest single-day leap of

This session introduces a new format that makes finding trades in real time our first priority. Rather than take an analytical look at various stocks, commodities and index futures, we will seek out real-time trades even if they have to be forced. This will produce more losers, of course, but that won’t hurt the learning process, since every trade will be closely rationalized to enhance the learning experience. During this session there were no trades that leaped out at us, but at least two ‘teaching examples’ that should help further your practical knowledge of the Hidden Pivot Method.

With the devastation in gold and silver picking up pace, I've updated my touts below to reflect, not wishful thinking and the fervent hopes of bullion investors, but the harsh realities of disinterested technical analysis. Some in the Rick's Picks chat room seem to think bulls have suffered enough pain already for precious-metal quotes to go much lower. They could be right, but based on the evidence I've presented in today's charts, I doubt it. Many terrific little mining companies are likely to go out of business, and if they are acquired by bigger companies, it may not be on very favorable terms, since the larger companies themselves are, or soon will be, stretched very thin.

We bought into an avalanche and hold 800 shares with an average cost of  5.97 that will likely come down to 5.72 when calls we shorted against the stock for 0.25 expire worthless. I now expect AG to fall to the 4.57 target in the days ahead, but I think it's unlikely to go any lower. At that point the stock will have lost 46% of its value in about six weeks.  I plan to stick with my position, but if you don't have the stomach or the resources to hold the stock for a further decline of 56 cents, you should blow out the position at will. If I trade against mine, I will say so in the chat room. Considering that bullion is getting obliterated yet again tonight, the stock could gap down to the target or close to it on the opening bell. _______ UPDATE (August 21, 1:59 p.m. EDT): To subscribers who are long stock and short Aug 31 5.5 calls as detailed above, I recommend bidding 0.05 for Sep 7 6.0 calls, g-t-c. Quantity should equal your covered writes 1:1. ________ UPDATE (August 23, 8:04 P.M.):  Okay, we bought the calls. Now bid 0.10 for a like number of Sep 7th 5.0 puts, good-till-canceled. [We bought 'em. Sit tight for now.] ________ UPDATE (August 28, 11:26 p.m.): Plan on covering the short August 31 5.50 calls on Friday as late in the session as possible, since we don't want our stock called away if the options finish in-the-money. Check with your broker concerning the deadline. If the calls finish out-of-the-money, no action will be necessary. We'll still hold the Sep 7 5/6 strangle for 0.15 in any event.

Today's chart is intended to stretch the bearish imagination of subscribers who seem to think silver bulls have been beaten up badly enough already. That kind of hopefulness appears to be popular in the chat room, and so it's probably a good time for me to introduce a 9.35 target that has technically sound underpinnings. It may seem to go against all logic, but at least from a technical standpoint such an unsettling outcome is hardly unthinkable. The pattern shown has a point 'B' low that is manifestly not 'sausage', and that is one reason why its target should be taken seriously. Today's dip beneath the midpoint pivot is not conclusive, but neither would I describe it as slight, considering the clarity of the picture. Some of you who are more familiar with the Hidden Pivot method may be hopeful that the futures will take a big 'counterintuitive' leap from somewhere near the 2016 low. The chart holds little promise for that, however, since the last big rally -- the one capped by the 20.835 high two years ago -- failed to exceed any significant prior peaks. ________ UPDATE (August 27, 8:16 p.m. EDT): Even on the intraday charts, Silver's rally off the 8/16 low still looks very unimpressive. I'll set the snooze alarm for 15.110, since that's when the move would become slightly interesting.