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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.

February 12, 2023

Is the U.S. in a Recession or Not?

Only on Wall Street is fake news celebrated with such shameless hubris as we’ve seen lately. In the last few weeks, flouting a torrent of lousy earnings reports, investors have gorged themselves on stocks.  This resurgence, doomed by recession and a grim outlook for earnings, was strongly supported by fake, or at least meaningless, employment […]

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February 5, 2023

Consumer Stimulus the Easy Way

Treat the stock market as you would a sleazy carnival game and you hold the key to accurately predicting its behavior. Take AAPL, for instance. We should have known that permabears were being set up for a fleecing when an always-complicit news media worked slavishly to stoke anticipation of horrendous Q4 earnings. Apple certainly didn’t […]

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January 29, 2023

Ready for Your Dollars to Be Canceled?

[This week’s commentary was written by David Isham, a real estate investor from Northern California who has subscribed to Rick’s Picks since its inception more than 20 years ago. RA ] With the ongoing financial turmoil and the potential start of another world war, gold is behaving as we would expect, showing exceptional strength. Although […]

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January 22, 2023

Thin News Begets Thick Craziness

The chart is meant to put Friday’s giddy short-squeeze in perspective. If you are a bull and feeling a little discouraged by what you see, that is what I had intended. What better time to rack bears than in the final hours of a week that was more comic relief than hard news? Biden’s docugate […]

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January 15, 2023

Congress Outperformed S&P 500 in 2022

The headline explains why the voracious bounders on Capitol Hill are willing to spend so much time, money and effort getting re-elected. For they are not just investment insiders, they are recidivist sponsors of legislation that directly benefits their stock portfolios. It is quite a racket, and whatever laws exist to prevent them from getting […]

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January 8, 2023

What to Expect as Inflation Cools

[The following went out in mid-December to clients of  Doug Behnfield, a Boulder-based wealth manager and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley. The letter provides an insightful view of the economic landscape as we enter the new year. Doug foresees falling stocks, falling inflation (or possibly modest deflation) and a continuing rally in long-term Treasurys.  […]

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January 2, 2023

Beware If 2023 Gets Off to a Good Start

Be skeptical if stocks start the new year on a positive note, since that would be the perfect way for Mr Market to set the hook to trap bulls and bears alike. It would probably take most of the opening session on Tuesday for an enticing rally to build up steam, since the bears who […]

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December 26, 2022

Santa Rally Crawls Toward the New Year

In an economy that over decades has grown increasingly dependent on revved-up holiday sales, investors have responded by praying more fervently each year for a Santa rally. It’s an odd metaphor, however, considering that Wall Street even at its seasonal cheeriest has a heart as cold and dark as volcanic glass. The Santa of investors’ […]

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December 18, 2022

‘AAPL Indicator’ Predicting a 10% Plunge

The modest bear market rally begun in October likely ended last week when stocks turned sharply lower after failing to achieve clear ‘Hidden Pivot’ rally targets. Now, if the selling should continue to exceed minor abcd targets as occurred last week, that would affirm that Papa Bear is back. AAPL in particular, the world’s most […]

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December 11, 2022

Fed Shows Deflation Who’s Boss

Bloomberg News, buzzed on Fed Kool-Aid as always, thinks the banksters have engineered a soft landing for deflation. Although it’s true that price bubbles in everything from used cars to styrofoam surfboard blanks have begun to detumesce, there is no reason to think the shrinkage will stop when inflation falls to some ‘comfortable’ level. That’s […]

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December 4, 2022

Maybe 2023 Won’t Be So Bad

Last week’s commentary went full contrarian with the seemingly nutty idea that 2023 could be a dull year for investors despite the looming possibility of a global economic collapse. Inflation, deep recession, war, disease and political unrest are just a few of the factors that could bring a badly limping financial system down. But suppose […]

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November 27, 2022

The Case for a Merely Choppy 2023

Early in October, it lifted my spirits to be able to bloviate about how a too-widely-anticipated October crash seemed as likely as a Martian invasion. One lunar calendar-based prediction in particular had October 21 as the crash date, although the forecast went squishy at sundown that day when dark clouds failed to materialize over Wall […]

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