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October 29, 2023 | Our #1 Bellwether Defies October Curse
Although my technical forecasts have generally been accurate, occasional guesses about when the sky would fall have consistently underimagined the height of bullish folly. Since yet another October looks likely to pass without a stock-market crash, perhaps it’s a good time to look at the chart of Apple, an institutional proxy that is incapable of […]
October 22, 2023 | The Smell of Napalm in the Morning
It took nearly two weeks for bears to recoup their mojo after getting sucker-punched by a suspiciously buoyant market following the October 7 Israel massacre. Although the attack could lead to a nuclear conflagration and world war, Wall Street kept its cool while trade desk sleazeballs deftly distributed shares to the rubes. But Friday’s are […]
October 15, 2023 | Be Among the First to Panic
Finally, a rally in gold that looks capable of leaving the $2000 barrier in the dust! This one is being pushed not only by the threat of escalated conflict in the Middle East, but by the dawning realization that a strong dollar and rising interest rates are about to trigger a crisis for the world’s […]
October 8, 2023 | This War Is Not a Tradeable Event
The massive terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel over the weekend will unsettle the geopolitical world for the foreseeable future. The economic implications are potentially too grave to be treated merely as a tradeable event; investors should instead be thinking about safeguarding capital. Will the price of crude spike to $117 or higher, as predicted […]
October 1, 2023 | ‘October Surprise’ Drumbeat Quickens
Price action last week in the charts of three bellwethers suggests that this year’s ‘October surprise’ could arrive right on schedule and that it could be a doozy. The first shows the dollar’s so-far shallow correction off a minor Hidden Pivot rally target. This portends yet more strength, threatening to turn Powell’s tightening regime into […]
September 24, 2023 | One Last Turn of the Screw, then REAL Pain
The bullish gap on the chart holds ominous implications for the global economy, since it removes almost all doubt that interest rates on U.S. Treasury Bonds are headed significantly higher. The rally looks nearly certain to reach 4.81%, the target of the pattern shown. The red line through which the gap occurred last Thursday is a […]
September 17, 2023 | A Stroll Down Disinflation Lane
[Last week’s commentary on the gathering economic storm elicited a light-hearted reminiscence from our friend Richard Charles of Alpine Capital. You’ll find his recollection of some notable deflationists enlightening, and there’s also a new word — screwflation — he has coined to describe a phenomenon that has yet to gain traction with eggheads at some of […]
September 10, 2023 | Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ McMansions?
Can the Wall Street Journal‘s headline writers save America’s juiced-up economy from going bust? They are certainly trying. Check out their lede in Friday’s editions: The Fall in Home Prices May Already Be Over. Fancy that! With mortgage rates headed toward 8%, many readers must have done a double-take when they read this seeming howler. Your editor […]
September 4, 2023 | Some Scary Shit
I let it all hang out in the interview I did Friday with USAWatchdog‘s Greg Hunter. Do I actually believe the U.S. economy is headed into a condition of barter? Yes, I do. It will be that bad. And global. Americans in particular will face a long period of severe hardship when these boom times end. […]
August 27, 2023 | ‘AI’ Just Another Wall Street Scam
A handful of tech moguls already control the global flow of information, but their influence over our lives will only expand and deepen if Congress doesn’t do something soon to pry their greedy hands from the ultimate fruits of AI development. I say this while recognizing the irony of casting our elected representatives as the […]
August 20, 2023 | Thoughts on Rent, the Fed, and Bonds
[The following was sent out to clients in late July by my friend Doug Behnfield, a wealth manager and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Boulder, CO. Long-time followers of Rick’s Picks will be familiar with Doug’s work, since his thoughts have appeared here many times. I have always considered him not only one of […]
August 13, 2023 | T-Bond Plunge Ahead?
Is Mr. Market about to deliver the coup de grace to bond bulls? It certainly appears that way. They’ve been getting schmeissed regularly since a frightening few days back in March 2020. At the time, investors were struggling to decide how covid would affect their financial lives. The wild gyrations near the top, followed by the subsequent collapse of […]
August 6, 2023 | AAPL Takes the Lead…Lower
Last week’s commentary said the first big correction of 2023 had a ways to go, and that is still the case. If there were any doubts about this, Apple’s swan dive Thursday on punk Q2 earnings released after the close should have dispelled them. The most valuable stock in the world fell by nearly 5%, […]
July 30, 2023 | First Big Correction of 2023 Has a Ways to Go
My ‘Chipotle indicator’ suggests that CMG, along with other high-fliers and the broad averages, could fall by at least 27% from recent highs before the bull market resumes later this summer. We last visited the burrito vendor’s chart in early May, just after a short-squeeze powered by feverish buying speared the red line, a ‘midpoint […]
July 23, 2023 | A Few Trillion Here, a Few Trillion There…
Last week’s commentary predicted that rates on the Ten-Year Note, currently around 3.8%, will hit a minimum 5.5% before inflation lurches into reverse and the U.S. begins a hellish descent into a full-blown debt deflation. The following, insightful response came from our friend Richard Charles at Alpine Capital: Well done, Rick, for highlighting the crux of markets […]
July 16, 2023 | 5.5% Rate on T-Bonds Coming, but Then What?
Jim Grant, the financial word’s adult in the room, says the bear market in Treasury bonds could last for decades. Do the long-term charts bear him out? The one reproduced above suggests that it’s at least possible that we are in the early stages of such a move. Most immediately, the chart projects a further […]
July 9, 2023 | Few Big Winners in the Hard Times Ahead
Will the rich and powerful own everything when the global financial system collapses from too much debt? Supposedly, “they” have been plotting and preparing for this all along — even getting a new money system ready to make the takeover complete. But this theory makes no more sense than the one that puts the same evil geniuses […]
July 2, 2023 | What to Expect After an Endless ‘Fourth’
This promises to be the longest holiday ever celebrated in the U.S., eclipsing even the eight-day festival holidays that frequently pop up on the Jewish calendar. By the time you read this, the Independence Day celebration will be in its unofficial fourth day, having begun in spirit with a pronounced slowdown in the stock market […]
June 25, 2023 | We’ll Look Back Fondly on Inflation
Inflation is being crushed from the system by vastly larger forces of deflation that have been lurking for decades. Although we might have expected the trillions in funny money that were force-fed into the U.S. economy during the covid era to have a longer-lasting effect on prices, inflation never had much of a chance. With […]
June 18, 2023 | Frustrated Bear? Temporary Relief Is on the Way
When will the rampaging bull run out of steam? A good question, considering how Wall Street has been flouting a slew of good reasons for the broad averages to be at multiyear lows rather than revving up for a shot at new record highs. Two destructive juggernauts in particular are bearing down on the economy […]
June 11, 2023 | How Wall Street Thrives on Meaningless Data
The Biden Administration can count on Wall Street to celebrate meaningless economic data and bogus GDP growth with steep rallies, even as the visible economy continues to implode. It will become increasingly difficult to ignore signs of impending collapse, however, as anyone who lives in San Francisco could tell you. The city’s growing wretchedness is […]
June 4, 2023 | $AAPL – Apple Computer (Last:180.95)
The post-covid bull market begun in the final quarter of 2020 is running out of room, at least on the daily chart. The 184,86 target shown, a Hidden Pivot resistance, is not the highest that can be projected, but it still looks capable of restraining the charge, if only for a short while. Sliding ‘A’ down […]
May 28, 2023 | And Now Microsoft Leads the Stampede!
Microsoft’s bullish rampage last week added to already strong evidence that the stock market is headed to new records highs. The shares of the software leviathan’s shares not only jackhammered through granite resistance in the form of the midpoint ‘Hidden Pivot’ shown in the chart, they ended the week decisively above it. This technical telltale […]
May 21, 2023 | Did the Bear Rally Top on Friday?
Maybe. Yeah, right. A headline here just two weeks ago implied that stocks were about to go bananas: Why a Permabear Is Certain We’re Going Much Higher. Hubris aside, this was based on the very bullish chart of just one stock, Chipotle (CMG). It had just crossed the $2,000 threshold and appeared — still appears — […]
May 14, 2023 | Bond Bulls Seemed Just as Crazy in 1981
[Editor’s note: The following commentary draws parallels between today’s bond market environment and the last great bear market in bonds, which bottomed in 1981. It went out last month to clients of my friend Doug Behnfield, a financial advisor and senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Boulder. Long-time followers of Rick’s Picks will be familiar with […]