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Rick Ackerman

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Rick Ackerman is the editor of Rick’s Picks, an online service geared to traders of stocks, options, index futures and commodities. His detailed trading strategies have appeared since the early 1990s in Black Box Forecasts, a newsletter he founded that originally was geared to professional option traders. Barron’s once labeled him an “intrepid trader” in a headline that alluded to his key role in solving a notorious pill-tampering case. He received a $200,000 reward when a conviction resulted, and the story was retold on TV’s FBI: The Untold Story. His professional background includes 12 years as a market maker in the pits of the Pacific Coast Exchange, three as an investigator with renowned San Francisco private eye Hal Lipset, seven as a reporter and newspaper editor, three as a columnist for the Sunday San Francisco Examiner, and two decades as a contributor to publications ranging from Barron’s to The Antiquarian Bookman to Fleet Street Letter and Utne Reader.

Rick's Picks - The S&Ps and Nasdaq hit record highs last week, a surreal milestone that only the Wall Street toadies at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal who fabricate the news could take seriously.  These are the same folks who bestowed the name ‘Magnificent Seven’ on a bunch of high-flying stocks whose short-squeeze histrionics qualify them for membership in […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Does the Stock Market still have room for record highs?

Rick's Picks - Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble have nothing on the bunco game Wall Street has been running with Microsoft shares. I write on this subject often because the numbers are so huge, and because the game, which is intertwined with the biggest financial con-job in history, is not one you will ever read about in The […]

Rick's Picks - There were few headlines out of the Middle East over the weekend, mainly because only Israel and Iran are capable of judging the damage, and neither is saying much. Wall Street, on the other hand, seems quite confident that whatever is happening, and irrespective of the outcome, it will be quite bullish for stocks. As […]

Rick's Picks - The stock market is in a topping process, brazenly manipulated by white-collar carnies who cut their teeth at Sloan, Wharton and Stanford. These newly trained ass-bandits have been working Microsoft shares to hold the broad averages aloft while they offload inventory to widows, pensioners and assorted other bag holders. I described in detail how this […]

Rick's Picks - The internet has evolved into the perfect medium for spreading crime into every household and every age group, and now Bitcoin is fast becoming the perfect medium for pushing a more violent kind of crime out into the streets. There was a time when one could avoid getting mugged simply by not wearing Italian shoes, […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Court rulings about US tariffs “just noise”

Rick's Picks - Of all the nutty ideas in investors’ heads these days, none is crazier or more pernicious than the mass delusion that grotesquely inflated asset prices have made tens of millions of us rich.  As equity shares and residential real estate prices have risen higher and higher due to Fed stimulus with money conjured from nowhere, […]

Rick's Picks - I’ve supported Trump since his first term, but my hopes for his success peaked a month ago when a panic-induced plunge in the S&P 500 reversed almost precisely from a 4820 target I’d sent out to subscribers. I saw this as the surprisingly quick end to a bear market that had only just begun in […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Junior Miners

Rick's Picks - [The S&Ps are losing steam after recouping two-thirds of their 1400-point loss in March/April. The stall near 5700 has left them hovering in the danger zone, just like the U.S. economy. Will it skirt recession? I have my doubts, even if price action on the S&P chart on April 7 led me to speculate that […]

Rick's Picks - [We are coming up on a month since I blew ‘Taps’ for a bear market that supposedly was just starting. There was panic in the air that Sunday because America’s enemies in Brussels were dumping T-Bonds in an attempt to crash the market. They were intent on forcing Powell to ease, but their plan failed […]

Rick's Picks - [My prediction three weeks ago that the bear market had seen its worst seemed crazy at the time — particularly to me, because I’m an inveterate permabear.  However, last week, bulls distanced themselves further from the low of the mini-crash that occurred when tariff  panic was in the air.  I’d said the selling would take […]

Rick's Picks - [Two weeks ago, I made the seemingly outrageous prediction that Trump’s tariff offensive would not cause a recession and that the stock market bear would soon be over.  Shares were in a steep plunge at the time, and investors around the world seemed ready to hit the panic button that Sunday night. The S&Ps had […]

Rick's Picks - [Just ahead of last Monday’s steep plunge, I predicted here that an S&P reversal from 4820 would mark the end of the bear market. So far, SPX has rallied 646 points off an actual low at 4835. Bulls are not yet out of the woods, however, since a relapse could occur at any time. The stock market […]

Rick's Picks - A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find […]

Rick's Picks - 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 […]

Rick's Picks - 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 […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Gold Miners finally getting the attention they deserve.

March 16th, 2025 | One Last Melt-Up?

Rick's Picks - 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, […]

Rick's Picks - 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 […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Forget about profits, just try to hold onto what you have.

Rick's Picks - 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 […]

Rick's Picks - 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 […]

HoweStreet.com Radio - Gold continues its charge higher
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