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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.

January 19, 2025

‘Microsoft Indicator’ Is Fool-Proof

Get Microsoft right, as I continue to remind you, and your forecast for the stock market can’t go far wrong. The tech giant is among the most valuable companies in the world, with extraordinary profit margins tied to an 80% market share in operating systems. The subscription-based revenue model the company has put in place […]

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January 12, 2025

Who Will Insure Us Against the Next Disaster?

Although the major indices were down just 1.6% on Friday, it felt like a big day. Everything that matters to the U.S. economy was moving the wrong way: stocks were falling across the board; interest rates and energy prices were climbing; dollars were growing dearer, especially for debtors; and gold, perhaps imagining a bevy of […]

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January 5, 2025

It’s Time to Tune Out Wall Street’s Siren Song

The party is over, or so says the chart above. It is a long-term picture of the E-Mini S&Ps, and it shows the futures rolling down after touching a 6136 target that has been nearly five years in coming. Actually, it has taken nearly 16 years to get there since the longest bull market in […]

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December 29, 2024

My Predictions for 2025? You Don’t Want to Know.

I’m making no bold predictions for 2025, since getting it right in these way-too-interesting times is like trying to guess when a ticking time bomb will explode. When it does, the shrapnel will pop an economic bubble so pumped with folly, greed and hubris that only a Wall Street shill or a madman could believe […]

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December 22, 2024

Last Week’s Plunge Was Worse than It Seemed

[The following analysis was contributed by my friend  Larry Amernick. His work has appeared here in the past, including excerpts from The Amernick Letter, which is no longer published. He is a former president of the Technical Securities Analysts Association of San Francisco.] Last Wednesday’s brutal response to a mildly hawkish Federal Reserve announcement triggered […]

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December 15, 2024

Which Will Crash First: Stocks or Bitcoin?

I’ll trash bitcoin in a moment — my new hobby — but first a yellow alert for everyone who thinks the stock market’s inevitable collapse is most likely to happen shortly after the first of the year. Although that seems quite plausible, fulfilling popular expectations is not how Mr Market usually works. Think how many […]

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December 8, 2024

The Herd Is Even More Fearless than in 1929

Skittish about the stock market’s manic climb?  Consider moving some of your savings into T-bills, which are currently yielding around 4.25%. You could do worse. Some of my friends are reluctant to take e ven a little money off the table because 2024 was such an incredible year for them.  One is a retired lawyer […]

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December 1, 2024

Cut $2 Trillion from the U.S. Budget…or What?

Let’s hope Musk and Ramaswamy have been paying close attention to David Stockman’s ten-part series on how to cut the U.S. budget before America spends its way into bankruptcy. Stockman was Reagan’s budget director in 1981-85 and eminently qualified to spell out the tough reforms needed to force the U.S. to live within its means. […]

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November 24, 2024

Let’s Execute a Few Internet Scammers!

Have you heard from “Cleo Kenmille” or “Caroline Johnson”? If not, consider yourself fortunate. Those are pseudonyms used by a crew of shitbags who work out of bucket shops that lie beyond the reach of international law. Their job is to steal money from you or anyone else who is familiar with PayPal, the online […]

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November 17, 2024

Bitcoin Leaps Above the Hubbub

The headline on last week’s commentary asked whether it might be morning in America, but the left’s combative reaction to the drubbing they received on November 5 suggests we could be closer to high noon. We may know soon, since the forces of darkness are going full-tilt against Matt Gaetz, Trump’s choice for Attorney General.  […]

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November 10, 2024

What If It Really Is Morning in America?

I’ve been confidently anticipating the Mother of All Tops since, like, around 1975, but this week I decided to go wholeheartedly with the flow. The result, technically speaking, is a robustly optimistic S&P target at 7644.50. This might not be what permabears want to hear, but it will leave bulls sufficient room to deal with […]

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November 3, 2024

A Canny Silver Bull Trades Ingots for T-Bonds

  [The author of this week’s commentary is an old friend who worked his way up from exchange-floor clerk to commercial real estate mogul over the time I’ve known him. He has demonstrated remarkable timing, courage and patience as an investor, buying commercial real estate at the bottom of the 2007-08 crash and holding it […]

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