ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
Rick Ackerman
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.
April 16th, 2023 | Spuds MacKenzie Is Rolling in His Grave
Rick's Picks - 5 pm The toppy look of Anheuser-Busch’s stock chart (above) implies that the company is at least somewhat likely to lose sales because of its attempt to shove the wretchedly unlovely Dylan Mulvaney down our throats. Bud Light is undrinkable pisswater to begin with, so perhaps we should not be cheering on the frat boys […]
April 13th, 2023 | Rising Interest Rates Not Killing Economy Yet
HoweStreet.com Radio - The best time of day to buy Gold. Special 14 Day Free Trial Subscription!
April 9th, 2023 | Lawyers Have Much to Fear from AI Bots
Rick's Picks - Anyone who has played around with ChatGPT knows that it is just dumb enough to succeed wildly. It harbors no opinions, grudges or wit, and it can talk a blue streak without saying anything interesting or exceptionable. Artificial intelligence seems particularly well suited to mimicking the rote tasks that lawyers charge clients hundreds or even […]
April 2nd, 2023 | To Hell in a Handbasket
Rick's Picks - Well, they finally indicted the proverbial ham sandwich last week, adding to our long list of worries that the world really is falling apart. It’s as good a time as any to trot out William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming as a reminder of where things are headed. This is arguably the most powerful poem in the English language, […]
March 19th, 2023 | To Pivot, or Not to Pivot, That Is the Question
Rick's Picks - To pivot, or not to pivot? That is the question Fed Chairman Powell will have pondered over the weekend while tending chicken breasts, franks and burgers spaced meticulously on the grating of a 148,000 BTU grill. If conscience doth indeed make cowards of us all, we might expect him to act boldly. But how? Does […]
March 16th, 2023 | There Is No “Real” Money to Back Up Failed Banks
HoweStreet.com Radio - Market obsession with the Fed disconcerting
March 5th, 2023 | Creating ‘Wealth’ Is 99% Inspiration and 1% Perspiration
Rick's Picks - Americans grew effortlessly richer last week when a two-day rally in stocks and bonds added many hundreds of billions of instantly spendable dollars to the economy. Most of it would have dropped into the hands of traders, speculators and portfolio managers. However, enough will trickle down to sales reps at Bijan, Dolce & Gabbana and […]
March 2nd, 2023 | Pension Crisis Could Cause a Deflationary Collapse
HoweStreet.com Radio - Substitute “taxpayer” for government bailout plans to get true impact
February 26th, 2023 | Uranium’s Bull Market Has Barely Begun
Rick's Picks - Uranium investments topped the list of exciting takeaways from the Mines & Money conference held in Miami last week. Keynote speaker Chris Temple, editor of The National Investor, dispelled nagging doubts about atomic power’s future when he noted that Greta ‘How-dare-you!’ Thunberg has been distancing herself from fellow activists who remain vociferously opposed to nuclear energy. […]
February 19th, 2023 | When the Bearish Case Looks Too Good
Rick's Picks - Get AAPL right and you get the stock market right. That has been our mantra for years, and it has never failed us. Apple shares and the broad averages are unlikely to go their separate ways because so many portfolio managers regard the stock as they do their Patek Phillipe wristwatches: something to pass on to […]
February 16th, 2023 | Gold, Silver, US Dollar, Lithium, Inflation, Interest Rates
HoweStreet.com Radio - Could US pension debt lead to hyperinflation?
February 12th, 2023 | Is the U.S. in a Recession or Not?
Rick's Picks - Only on Wall Street is fake news celebrated with such shameless hubris as we’ve seen lately. In the last few weeks, flouting a torrent of lousy corporate earnings reports, investors have gorged themselves on stocks. This resurgence, doomed by recession and a grim outlook for earnings, was supported mainly by fake, or at least […]
February 5th, 2023 | Consumer Stimulus the Easy Way
Rick's Picks - Treat the stock market as you would a sleazy carnival game and you hold the key to accurately predicting its behavior. Take AAPL, for instance. We should have known that permabears were being set up for a fleecing when an always-complicit news media worked slavishly to stoke anticipation of horrendous Q4 earnings. Apple certainly didn’t […]
February 1st, 2023 | US in Recession, Gold, Inflation, Deflation
HoweStreet.com Radio - Could Bitcoin eventually collapse to just $5.00? Special 14 Day Free Trial Subscription!
January 22nd, 2023 | Thin News Begets Thick Craziness
Rick's Picks - The chart is meant to put Friday’s giddy short-squeeze in perspective. If you are a bull and feeling a little discouraged by what you see, that is what I had intended. What better time to rack bears than in the final hours of a week that was more comic relief than hard news? Biden’s docugate […]
January 19th, 2023 | Gold, Platinum and Palladium, Job Cuts
HoweStreet.com Radio - Self driving cars, Crude Oil, Natural Gas
January 15th, 2023 | Congress Outperformed S&P 500 in 2022
Rick's Picks - The headline explains why the voracious bounders on Capitol Hill are willing to spend so much time, money and effort getting re-elected. For they are not just investment insiders, they are recidivist sponsors of legislation that directly benefits their stock portfolios. It is quite a racket, and whatever laws exist to prevent them from getting […]
January 8th, 2023 | What to Expect as Inflation Cools
Rick's Picks - [The following went out in mid-December to clients of Doug Behnfield, a Boulder-based wealth manager and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley. The letter provides an insightful view of the economic landscape as we enter the new year. Doug foresees falling stocks, falling inflation (or possibly modest deflation) and a continuing rally in long-term Treasurys. He is […]
January 5th, 2023 | Energy, Interest Rates, Recession
HoweStreet.com Radio - San Francisco Real Estate, Office Vacancies
January 2nd, 2023 | Beware If 2023 Gets Off to a Good Start
Rick's Picks - Be skeptical if stocks start the new year on a positive note, since that would be the perfect way for Mr Market to set the hook to trap bulls and bears alike. It would probably take most of the opening session on Tuesday for an enticing rally to build up steam, since the bears who […]
December 25th, 2022 | Santa Rally Crawls Toward the New Year
Rick's Picks - In an economy that over decades has grown increasingly dependent on revved-up holiday sales, investors have responded by praying more fervently each year for a Santa rally. It’s an odd metaphor, however, considering that Wall Street even at its seasonal cheeriest has a heart as cold and dark as volcanic glass. The Santa of investors’ […]
December 22nd, 2022 | Negative Santa Claus Rally, US Dollar, Gold
HoweStreet.com Radio - Shorting, Recession, High Tech
December 18th, 2022 | ‘AAPL Indicator’ Predicting a 10% Plunge
Rick's Picks - The modest bear market rally begun in October likely ended last week when stocks turned sharply lower after failing to achieve clear ‘Hidden Pivot’ rally targets. Now, if the selling should continue to exceed minor abcd targets as occurred last week, that would affirm that Papa Bear is back. AAPL in particular, the world’s most […]
December 11th, 2022 | $AAPL – Apple Computer (Last:142.18)
Rick's Picks - AAPL looked like hell last week, stopping out the point ‘C’ low of a weak bullish pattern, but making little headway on the obligatory bounce. Desperation will not provide the distribution opportunities its handlers seek, but their one good trick — gapping the stock down on the opening in order to exhaust sellers — hasn’t […]
December 4th, 2022 | Maybe 2023 Won’t Be So Bad
Rick's Picks - Last week’s commentary went full contrarian with the seemingly nutty idea that 2023 could be a dull year for investors despite the looming possibility of a global economic collapse. Inflation, deep recession, war, disease and political unrest are just a few of the factors that could bring a badly limping financial system down. But suppose […]