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Daily Commentary

The Morning Line

Rick Ackerman’s daily market commentary — blunt, specific, and free of Wall Street spin. Browse the full archive below.

May 14, 2023

Bond Bulls Seemed Just as Crazy in 1981

[Editor’s note: The following commentary draws parallels between today’s bond market environment and the last great bear market in bonds, which bottomed in 1981. It went out last month to clients of my friend Doug Behnfield, a financial advisor and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Boulder. Long-time followers of Rick’s Picks […]

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April 30, 2023

Why a Permabear Is Certain We’re Going Much Higher (II)

[I’m giving the commentary below a second week on the front page because the thesis is so outrageous even I can scarcely believe it. Stocks screamed higher to end the week, as if everything were right with the world.  What lunacy!  Investors have truly gone out of their minds. Reportedly, there are 186 U.S. banks […]

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April 23, 2023

It’s All Good, Sort of…

Readers will be pleased to hear that Alissa Heinerscheid, the Anheuser-Busch marketing whiz responsible for featuring Dylan Mulvaney’s unwholesome mug on cans of Bud Light, appears to have lost her job. A-B reportedly put Heinerscheid on a leave of absence, replacing her with a senior executive.  Since the megabrewer is unlikely to promote Alissa, and […]

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April 16, 2023

Spuds MacKenzie Is Rolling in His Grave

The toppy look of Anheuser-Busch’s stock chart (above) implies that the company is at least somewhat likely to lose sales because of its attempt to shove the wretchedly unlovely Dylan Mulvaney down our throats.  Bud Light is undrinkable pisswater to begin with, so perhaps we should not be cheering on the frat boys who made […]

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April 9, 2023

Lawyers Have Much to Fear from AI Bots

Anyone who has played around with ChatGPT knows that it is just dumb enough to succeed wildly. It harbors no opinions, grudges or wit, and it can talk a blue streak without saying anything interesting or exceptionable. This kind of artificial intelligence seems perfectly suited to mimicking the rote tasks that lawyers charge clients hundreds […]

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April 2, 2023

To Hell in a Handbasket

Well, they finally indicted the proverbial ham sandwich last week, adding to our long list of worries that the world really is falling apart. It’s as good a time as any to trot out William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming as a reminder of where things are headed. This is arguably the most powerful poem […]

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March 26, 2023

Are Powell & Co. Actual Morons?

When I refer to Fed chairman Powell or to the Fed governors, collectively, as morons, I’m not suggesting that readers take this characterization literally. Indeed, most of them have IQs that are probably twice the 51-70 range that would categorize a person clinically as a moron. (It is only when casting aspersions on politicians, some […]

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March 19, 2023

To Pivot, or Not to Pivot, That Is the Question

To pivot, or not to pivot? That is the question Fed Chairman Powell will have pondered over the weekend while tending chicken breasts, franks and burgers spaced meticulously on the grating of a 148,000 BTU grill. If conscience doth indeed make cowards of us all, we might expect him to act boldly. But how? Does […]

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March 12, 2023

Building Better Cities, Marxist-Style

[This week’s commentary was written by  David J. Isham a longtime subscriber to Rick’s Picks. A real estate investor and trader, David lives with his family in Marin County.] For Americans eager to embrace socialism, China’s take on the so-called 15-minute city will warm your hearts. As an urban planning concept, the 15-minute city aims […]

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March 5, 2023

Creating ‘Wealth’ Is 99% Inspiration and 1% Perspiration

Americans grew effortlessly richer last week when a two-day rally in stocks and bonds added many hundreds of billions of instantly spendable dollars to the economy. Most of it would have dropped into the hands of traders, speculators and portfolio managers. However, enough will trickle down to sales reps at Bijan, Dolce & Gabbana and […]

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February 26, 2023

Uranium’s Bull Market Has Barely Begun

Uranium investments topped the list of exciting takeaways from the Mines & Money conference held in Miami last week. Keynote speaker Chris Temple, editor of The National Investor, dispelled nagging doubts about atomic power’s future when he noted that Greta ‘How-dare-you!’ Thunberg has been distancing herself from fellow activists who remain vociferously opposed to nuclear […]

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February 19, 2023

When the Bearish Case Looks Too Good

Get AAPL right and you get the stock market right. That has been our mantra for years, and it has never failed us. Apple shares and the broad averages are unlikely to go their separate ways because so many portfolio managers regard the stock as they do their Patek Phillippe wristwatches: something to pass on […]

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