Daily Commentary
The Morning Line
Rick Ackerman’s daily market commentary — blunt, specific, and free of Wall Street spin. Browse the full archive below.
June 12, 2022
As if the thimble-riggers at the Fed didn’t have enough to worry about, the dollar turned rabid last week, threatening to transform America’s still-undeclared recession into a downturn for the history books. The greenback’s rally pushed the price of U.S. goods even higher for foreigners while increasing the cost of fuel that they pay for […]
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June 6, 2022
There’s no relief in sight for gas prices that seem headed to at least $10 gallon. The chart above suggests July crude will likely hit $128 this week or early next, a whopping 7.5% gain over last week’s high. But watch out if the futures shred their way past this Hidden Pivot resistance, since that […]
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May 29, 2022
As the bear market runs its course in the months and years ahead, it will be punctuated by sharp and sometimes spectacular rallies to convince investors the worst is over. That is how Mr. Market will trap most of them into sticking with stocks until the bitter end. For only when the last bull has […]
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May 22, 2022
The same geniuses who recently handicapped a recession that likely began several months ago as a 20% possibility are now reassuring us that the bear market has already run its course. If so, it would be the mildest, shortest bear market in history –three hours and 20 minutes, to be exact. The S&Ps entered bear-market […]
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May 15, 2022
We’ve had four months to observe and analyze the bear market that began a single tick off January 4’s record high. What might be said about it so far? Mainly that it has been far kinder and gentler than we should expect. Realize that the biggest financial bubble in U.S. history has popped. Although this […]
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May 8, 2022
Last week’s commentary asked how high the dollar can climb before it snuffs inflation and the increasingly shrill hysteria that has accompanied it. Inflation is supposed to cheapen the dollar, but that is not what has been happening. Instead, it has been climbing steeply relative to all other currencies. The experts have not been able […]
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May 1, 2022
A lone deflationist on the lunatic fringe of economics 30 years ago, I wrote in Barron’s and the San Francisco Sunday Examiner that an out-of-control dollar eventually would do us in. Specifically, I asserted that a short squeeze on dollars would send their value soaring, making it difficult or impossible for anyone who owed dollars […]
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April 24, 2022
If you’re a permabear, it might be refreshing to view Friday’s thousand-point Dow avalanche as the start of a wholesome new trend. My gut feeling, however, is that the plunge will reverse before midweek, ideally at Hidden Pivot targets featured in the latest list of ‘touts’ on the Rick’s Picks home page. I’ll keep an […]
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April 17, 2022
For many of us, as pleasurable as it might be to picture Twitter in the hands of Elon Musk, and to imagine a despairing Jack Dorsey committing seppuku, Musk should save his billions for more useful purposes. He could start by building a competitive platform for a hundredth of what he’s offered to pay for […]
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April 10, 2022
For more than a year, I’ve recommended what my friend Doug Behnfield calls the ‘barbell strategy’ to secure one’s nest egg against the deflationary hard times that lie ahead. As formulated by Doug, a wealth-management advisor based in Boulder, the barbell portfolio is constructed with gold and bonds as offsets. Try to imagine the worst […]
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April 3, 2022
[Counting on the Fed to ride to the rescue when the bubble finally pops? You had better have a Plan B, and for good measure a Plan C, since America could be in for something far worse than mere recession when the asset boom ends. In the commentary below, my friend Charles Hugh-Smith spells out […]
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March 27, 2022
Last week’s commentary was skeptical that the short squeeze begun two weeks ago in the broad averages would prove to be just a bear rally. Based on the latest technical evidence, it now seems likely that stocks are headed to new all-time highs. This is despite the fact that the world is going to hell […]
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