ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
July 26, 2026 | Stick It!
Although we featured pithy weekly commentaries in this space for many years, the time and effort spent crafting them is now devoted to making the Rick’s Picks Trading Room an unbeatable source of timely trading ideas for novices and professionals. You should check here weekly, since I will continue to post links to my latest interviews and […]
July 26, 2026 | Long Term Rate Headache
I talk about the Federal Reserve often in these letters, and for good reasons. Fed policy has enormous influence on the economy. Yet the Fed has far more power in some areas than others. It has deep, almost dictatorial control over short-term interest rates and overnight bank liquidity and much less power over long-term yields. […]
July 26, 2026 | Recession Watch: Private Credit Bubble Threatens the Mega Banks
One of the selling points of “real” banks like JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America is that they’re immune to the debauchery of the private credit “shadow banking system.” But it turns out that mainstream banks have also been feasting on those fat private credit fees and high loan rates. And now they’re reaping that […]
July 25, 2026 | Trading Desk Notes for July 25, 2026
Anything Can Happen – All Markets Are Related To Each Other In Some Fashion The Notes will be brief today – family weekend, including grandkids and another dog! Yikes! Energy The war risk premium was squeezed out of the market in May/June, but it has returned with a vengeance in July. ICE Front-month Brent traded at a high of […]
July 25, 2026 | It Is IMPOSSIBLE to Avoid Government Surveillance Stalking
WARNING: The majority of cameras have been updated to include live signal trace technology. Flock instantly integrates your unique Bluetooth identifiers with your personal data profile in a centralized database. What does this mean? Government and private organizations with access to the centralized database no longer need physical surveillance cameras to track you […]
July 25, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday July 25th 2026
The Bottom Line Focuses this week are on: Quarterly reports by Meta Platforms and Microsoft on Wednesday, and Amazon on and Apple on Thursday. FOMC decision on interest rate on Wednesday. U.S. inflation rate based on PCE Core Price Index released on Thursday Earnings and Revenue Consensus for S&P 500 Companies Source: www.factset.com Analysts increased […]
July 24, 2026 | A $200 Barrel of Crude Oil is Now a Definite Possibility
The $200 crude oil forecast is back on the table — and this time it deserves to be taken seriously. When U.S./Israel/Iran hostilities began on February 28, some analysts immediately flagged the possibility of triple-digit crude prices. For five months, markets proved them wrong. Brent crude topped out at $120 per barrel — elevated, but […]
July 24, 2026 | The Rise of the Ellison Empire
There was a time when America’s industrial titans built railroads, steel mills, and oil companies. Today, influence is measured in data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, media, and information. Few families illustrate that transformation better than the Ellisons. Larry Ellison built Oracle from a small software company into one of the world’s largest technology firms. His […]
July 23, 2026 | AI Bust Fallout ‘More Significant’ Than Dot-Com
A historic take-back period is baked into current pricing. The US stock market’s rally to new highs has been propelled by so few stocks that it’s reminding some on Wall Street of the runup to the dot-com bubble. George Noble, Managing Partner of Noble Capital Advisors, discusses the AI trade and how he believes the […]
July 23, 2026 | Private Equity Landlords Are Dumping Their Houses
There are three groups that, together, will tank the housing market in the coming year: Boomers who can’t manage their three-story McMansions and therefore have to sell. Airbnb entrepreneurs who built mini-empires that are now bleeding cash, leaving them with no choice but to liquidate. Wall Street firms that bought huge numbers of houses and […]
July 22, 2026 | Main Street Is Breaking While Wall Street Celebrates
Every recovery eventually reaches a point where the official statistics no longer resemble reality. Politicians point to stock market records, economists celebrate another quarter of GDP growth, and central bankers congratulate themselves because inflation has moderated. Then you look at Main Street, where the people actually creating jobs are quietly closing their doors. Small […]
July 22, 2026 | Fourth Turning Global War
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with […]
July 21, 2026 | US Home Builder Sentiment Contracts for 15th Month
Washington keeps insisting the economy is healthy because unemployment has not collapsed and inflation has moderated. Then you look at housing, and the entire narrative falls apart. A nation cannot call itself prosperous when ordinary working families can no longer afford the most basic measure of financial stability—a home. The National Association of Home […]
July 21, 2026 | Researchers Studied AI Layoffs. Here’s Their Warning
Every few months, it seems that another tech CEO predicts that AI will do many of our jobs in the future. But if companies eventually replace too many workers with AI, will there be enough people left with a paycheck to continue buying goods and keep the economy going? In this episode, Katty Kay talks […]
July 20, 2026 | Musk’s Unrealistic Future View is a New World Communist Vision
QUESTION: Martin, How does the richest man in the world not understand basic economics? Blog post? BT ANSWER: For the life of me, I believe this sort of thinking all stems from Karl Marx and this distorted idea that the object is to be taken care of by government and just lay around and watch TV […]
July 20, 2026 | Signs of Improvement?
Happy Monday Morning! As expected, the Bank of Canada held rates this past week. “After a year of weakness, Canada’s economy is showing signs of improvement,” the bank said in its monetary policy report. “Growth is expected to pick up, and inflation eases gradually from its recent peak. Uncertainty is still high.” What is perhaps […]
July 19, 2026 | Rigging Elections Has Been Around for Thousands of Years
QUESTION: Are you just supporting Trump with his conspiracy theory about the 2020 election? Joshua ANSWER: The fact that the press keeps blasting Trump claiming the 2020 was not rigged and in Pennsylvania they claim Trump lost every legal challenge so that somehow proves he was wrong is just absurd. Courts are also political. Why […]
July 19, 2026 | Maybe Central Banks Are Gold-Price Sensitive After All
For a while now, analysts (including this one) have been predicting that central banks will keep buying gold regardless of its price, thereby smoothing out the normal ups and downs in that market. But recent action implies that central banks do care about what they’re paying for gold — which, at this point in the […]
July 19, 2026 | Inflation Conundrums
Last week I noted the problems of sitting down with a blank screen and trying to figure out what to write. This week I have the opposite problem: I have well over 20 important research notes from various authorities about inflation, Federal Reserve policy, and interest rates. The challenge will be to summarize the most […]
July 19, 2026 | Bending Civilization Toward Zuckerworld
Pretty creepy, huh? Zuckerberg is so certain Ray-Ban spyglasses are the future that he has hired billionaire influencer Kylie Jenner to endorse them. Do we really crave having a world of information literally in our faces? We’re about to find out. A factory in Italy has been churning out Meta glasses by the millions, and […]
July 18, 2026 | Trading Desk Notes for July 18, 2026
“People will believe the most preposterous stories, as long as the price keeps going up!” Bob Hoye Bobby has been a friend for ~50 years. I once introduced him at a conference as a great market historian who was actually “there” when the Tulip Bulb mania hit Holland in the 1630s. What I love about his “preposterous” quote […]
July 18, 2026 | The Documents Washington Never Wanted Release
The White House has now released a series of declassified election-integrity documents that the administration says expose what it describes as the largest compromise of American voter data in history. The release followed President Trump’s heated nationally televised address Thursday night, where he argued that China systematically acquired sensitive voter information during the 2020 election […]
July 18, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday July 18th 2026
The Bottom Line The “Summer Rally” for the S&P 500 Index and the TSX Composite Index normally between June 27th and July 17th came to an abrupt end on Thursday July 16th this year. The S&P 500 Index only gained 1.40% and the TSX Composite Index only added 1.3% during the “Summer Rally” season this […]
July 17, 2026 | Has Chuck Schummer Conspired with Netanyahu to Block Iran Peace before the Midterms?
I have received numerous emails asking if Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are attempting to frustrate Trump to prevent him from exiting the Iran War to influence the Midterms by refusing to sign the defense bill for the first time in history. The Democrats under Schummer are clearly trying to prolong the Iran war to […]
July 17, 2026 | The Heat is on El Nino
A perfect storm is building. El Niño has arrived early, global warming is amplifying its reach, and two active wars are straining food and energy supply chains simultaneously. For millions of people, the next eighteen months could be brutal. El Niño takes its name from the Spanish for the Christ child — Peruvian fishermen first […]