Uncannily Accurate Forecasts for Stocks & Commodities
Daily Commentary
Rick Ackerman’s daily market commentary — blunt, specific, and free of Wall Street spin. Browse the full archive below.
June 13, 2021
Flush with stimulus, the states are in a spending mood that can be summed up in a single word: TOGA!!!!! Take Oklahoma. Their latest budget reflects an annual increase of nearly 18%, according to a report from the Associated Press. It includes bigger earmarks for education, corporate and personal tax cuts, credits for school choice […]
Read the full commentary →June 6, 2021
If we’d known the pandemic would trigger the most reckless monetary blowout in history, could anyone have imagined that the U.S. dollar a year later would have fallen by just 14%? That doesn’t even qualify as a bear market, just a middling correction of a powerful bull run begun in 2008, a year ahead of […]
Read the full commentary →June 1, 2021
Sucks? Yeah, sure. Maybe in the eyes of crypto fanatics and the quacks who re-invent monetary policy every month. In actuality, few things in the material world suck less than gold. Sorry to resort to headline flim-flammery to get your attention, but it was time to upgrade our enthusiastic endorsement of gold — and silver! […]
Read the full commentary →May 23, 2021
Investors who feared muni-bond defaults when the pandemic first hit created unusual opportunity for those willing to buck the tide. One of the winners was Doug Behnfield, a Boulder-based financial adviser at Morgan Stanley whose ideas have been featured here many times over the years. Doug is not only one of the savviest investors I […]
Read the full commentary →May 16, 2021
With home prices pumped to record levels, we are hearing more and more about Uncle Sam’s plan to avoid sticking it to taxpayers when the next crash hits. Although it’s always wise to have a plan to deal with catastrophe, especially one that is inevitable, there are reasons to doubt that a mortgage market valued […]
Read the full commentary →May 9, 2021
We went out on a limb here last week with speculation that, just maybe, the bull market was topping. Alas, Friday ended with a short-covering orgy that bloodied bears, leaving the boldest of them festooned on the ropes. My hunch had been rooted in technical factors, including an ominous head-and-shoulders pattern that has been evolving […]
Read the full commentary →May 2, 2021
First, let me titillate all of you die-hard permabears with a ray of hope: A potentially important top may have formed last week in, respectively, the E-Mini S&Ps and in IWM, a proxy for the Russell 2000. The former stalled inches from a ‘Hidden Pivot’ resistance at 4222.82, while the latter turned down precisely on […]
Read the full commentary →April 25, 2021
Headline writers hyperventilated last week over the prospect of higher capital gains taxes while the stock market took it in stride. Biden wants to double the levy on long-term investments to 39.6%, ending a felicitous run at 20% that was enacted 40 years ago under President Reagan. The Wealthy Will Fight Him to the Death, […]
Read the full commentary →April 18, 2021
Bitcoin mania hit an air pocket on Sunday with a so-far $11,500 plunge from last week’s record-high $64,858. Groping for an explanation, Bloomberg and other mainstream sources attributed the drop to speculation that the U.S. Treasury might crack down on digital-money laundering. Yeah, sure. This tired story has been marking time for a decade, ever […]
Read the full commentary →April 11, 2021
The inflation trade is struggling for loft, a potential victim of its own, wild popularity. “We don’t have strong reflation-trade momentum at the moment because people are waiting for more data,” said Daniel Tenengauzer, markets strategy chief at Bank of New York Mellon. By his logic, all that it would take to stoke inflation would […]
Read the full commentary →April 4, 2021
Biden’s $2.2 trillion ‘infrastructure’ plan is quite ambitious as far as Government boondoggles go. But what if it’s just the Democrats’ opening bid? “We can do $10 trillion!” exhorted Alexandria Octavio-Cortez in a wild-eyed remark that is unlikely to be challenged by fellow Democrats or the New York Times. Even $10 trillion would be chump […]
Read the full commentary →March 28, 2021
The technological wizardry that has given us smart phones, desktop computers, electric cars and flat-screen TVs has masked a pernicious decline in America’s standard of living since the 1950s. One area where this is painfully obvious is the deterioration of customer service. Recall the scene in Back to the Future when a car pulls into […]
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