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.
March 30, 2025
Here’s some cold water on the notion that Trump’s radical trade policies could help bring about an economic golden era. I’d written here last week that punitive tariffs might be the only medicine strong enough to jolt the world into doing honest business. Foreign manufacturers would leap to relocate their plants to the U.S. in […]
Read the full commentary →March 30, 2025
I’ve reinstated MSFT as our top market bellwether because other symbols that have served in that role look too punk to count on. The shares of Apple, which couldn’t innovate its way out of a wet paper bag, will be extremely vulnerable when recession hits, while Bitcoin’s canny handlers lack the guts to lead stocks […]
Read the full commentary →March 23, 2025
The Trump wild card has made it especially difficult to bet on the stock market. Even cynics can’t say for sure that his radical agenda will not eventually produce an economic golden era capable of pushing the Dow average to 100,000 or higher. In just two short months, the president has crushed wokeness and racial […]
Read the full commentary →March 16, 2025
Will there be one last melt-up before this doddering bull market seeks penance? Some of my fellow gurus believe a final show of bravado is coming, especially those who base their predictions on Elliott Wave Theory. I think the party is over, but I’m forced to admit that if too many traders agree with me, […]
Read the full commentary →March 9, 2025
I’ve written here before about how the broad averages have struggled to go lower during what could turn out to be the initial phase of a bear market. Many traders, particularly greenhorns too young to have never experienced a bear market, appear to be buying each step of the way down. They could do so […]
Read the full commentary →March 2, 2025
You’ve heard from ‘Formula382’ before. A longtime Rick’ Picks subscriber, he manages wealth in the Ozarks, using puts and calls aggressively, with a dollop of good timing, to keep clients happy. He has also shown uncanny skill at rotating out of sectors just before they peak. In a recent chat room discussion, Formula wondered whether […]
Read the full commentary →March 2, 2025
You’ve heard from ‘Formula382’ before. A longtime Rick’ Picks subscriber, he manages wealth in the Ozarks, using puts and calls aggressively, with a dollop of good timing, to keep clients happy. He has also shown uncanny skill at rotating out of sectors just before they peak. In a recent chat room discussion, Formula wondered whether […]
Read the full commentary →February 23, 2025
I’m tracking Nvidia shares closely because they can tell us whether China’s DeepSeek threatens America’s lead in AI development. The Nasdaq-listed stock got pummeled a month ago when the Chinese revealed they were developing an open-source chatbot that can easily compete on performance and price with the most advanced models offered by OpenAI and other […]
Read the full commentary →February 16, 2025
Trump promised everything but a cure for cancer during last Thursday’s press conference, and there was no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to helping to shape a better world. Can he do it? One thinks of Teddy Roosevelt, who possessed seemingly limitless energy and zeal for taking on big projects, including building a national […]
Read the full commentary →February 9, 2025
Get the forecast for Microsoft right and you cannot go far wrong guessing where the stock market is headed next. This has been an article of faith at Rick’s Picks for years, and it has served us well. The chart shows MSFT either moving in lock-step with the Dow Industrials, or sometimes leading the Indoos […]
Read the full commentary →February 2, 2025
Bloggers were revved up when last week began, trumpeting a warning that China’s DeepSeek R1 threatened to crush America’s capital-intensive effort to lead the world in AI development. ZeroHedge was among the first to jump on the story. “The future of humanity is being decided as we speak,” wrote Mark Whitney. “This is a full-blown, […]
Read the full commentary →January 26, 2025
I still expect Bitcoin to notch one or two more record highs on the hourly chart, but they will likely be the dying gasp of the bull market that began in 2009. There is reason to doubt that the broad averages will be swept up in this fetid blast of flatulence. That would create a […]
Read the full commentary →