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NO NEW ALL TIME HIGH IN 2025? | STOCK MARKET TALK
Recorded: April 14, 2025 Duration: 2:01:24Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic market landscape, key indicators show growth potential in sectors like technology and biotech, with Bitcoin and major stocks like Apple and Nvidia leading the charge. As investors navigate through volatility, strategic insights into emerging trends and recovery patterns highlight opportunities for capitalizing on market rebounds.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Good afternoon or good morning wherever you are in the world right now should be afternoon for
most people. It's actually Monday, August, April the 14th. Where am I at? April the 14th. We are green across the markets.
Gapped up, came back down, filled the gap and bounced off of it since then. Taking a look
around the market as I get everyone pulled up here on stage so we can get everyone's thoughts
about what in the world is going on here. I do see SPY is up. Green on the day, 1.3%. QQQ, 1.15%. IWM also up 1.3%.
And the Dow, 1.25%. Green VIX down 18%, down around that $30 level. Notice gold was down
today. Oil about break even. Bitcoin was also pushing up nicely today over the 85K mark over there on the biddy. It's been an interesting day. We gapped up overnight. We had some interesting news over the weekend. Excited to hear everyone's takes on that. Evan, I'm going to toss you co-host, give you a chance to say hello if you want, and then we'll start going around the panel.
Yeah.
No, I'm looking forward to what everyone has to say today.
It's something interesting in the stock market.
We had a bunch of headlines over this weekend.
We're coming into Monday with a full week of headlines already
in what would have been a couple weeks ago.
So, yeah, it should be interesting to hear what everyone says.
I'm going to kind of stop us because the answer is around like 345, 350.
So, yeah.
But these conversations are best when smart people talk to smart people.
So feel free to jump in.
And, yeah, maybe we should go to Scott first.
Scott, how are you doing today, sir?
Absolutely.
What's up, Scott?
Hey, how's everybody doing today?
Doing well, doing well well my Apple is leading it feels like it's been underperforming pretty well
on the up days it felt like it was it was up a little bit less on the down
days it felt like it was down a little bit more a little bit different today
and we'll see how long that lasts but yeah how are you doing don't tell me we
don't get we don't have to go down the Apple route I feel like I maybe I open
it up on myself but every spaces someone just uses that as an example no you know what apple
actually apple listen apple was important today apple kind of led they are this morning everyone
was like asking me red dog are we gonna hold the gap open are they gonna sell the news are we gonna
hold and build i'm like well guess what i'm like apple's opening up in the gap
if it holds 208 50 you know maybe we hold early gains if it fades and and nvidia doesn't you know
get above 114 and if all of a sudden you know palantir can't follow through it'll give you some
some clues that you can't pay up yet you know you could buy in the hole last week proved you could
buy in the hole and trade around things but nothing's giving us any clues that you
could pay up and and not have to take any pain so you know apple kind of faded and so did the market
right as you said the spies went down to 544 filled the gap apple went all the way down to 20116 it
felt as if it was going to be like a failure in this end of the range and and and then you know
they kind of regrouped and the market looks somewhat decent.
I don't think it's off to the races, but maybe today proved that, hey, you know, maybe you could stick with some things for more than a trade as some things look kind of better than others, like they always do.
But again, I still think it's kind of take your trades type of market. It's earning season.
There's no reason to have to sit in multiple multiple names just in case you get the bombs but um yeah they kind of saved it
a lot of people are saying oh i'm fading and i'm adding to shorts and i was like why are you adding
to shorts here today maybe it's just maybe they just needed to trade the range a little bit pack
and fill a little bit and then rebuild this upper third of the chart. So now, at least for the week, technically,
I would say as long as we hold this 533.86 in the Spies and hold just say in the Qs, hold
that 453, I would think that today was a pretty constructive day for the Bulls. And maybe,
you know, we could see a move back above the Wednesday's high of last week. And I would think if, you know, a lot of things has to happen.
But we could see 555 to 560 this week, which would definitely be a little bit of an offside trade because people probably don't want to be as long.
But it could happen.
So I would just say to the shorts, be careful just adding because it worked so much the last two weeks.
Whereas, you know, a few things go right,
and maybe they squeeze the shorts above last Wednesday's high, and maybe the more compelling
spot would be like the 555, 560 area to put some real hedges on, go out a few months if you think
the next quarter or two is going to be tough, and the PE of the S&P has to come down, and all those
cute things, which probably has to happen.
And I'd say for a go-to list wise, I feel like my go-to list kind of readjusted because during a correction, you get to see like what names hold up best and what moves up the list
and responds better when the market bounces. Something stayed, something's left. I would say,
you know, Palantir is very impressive. When the market
really wants to hang in there and get a little traction, this thing is definitely leading the
way again. It was good that it held up pretty well. I think DoorDash still holds up very well.
I think Nvidia, not great, but it kind of did a decent job. Today, you know, fell into resistance but held around.
So there's a list of, you know, J.P. Morgan on Friday showed that the banks could hold up.
And then Goldman Sachs, they couldn't really fade that.
That was a viable dip.
So I think this week it's going to be choppy, but I wouldn't be in such a rush to short.
I would say if I was a betting man, which I don't bet the stock market's not a casino.
This isn't a day-to-day trader.
No, I'm kidding.
I think we could see, I would say, I would take the over of 550 this week on the Spies.
Do you think it's ultimately a dead cat bounce when we look in the kind of week and month
perspective?
I think that, you know, once you get higher, it's going to be harder for things to rally after companies withdraw their guidance.
Like when Delta took out their guidance, you know, the spies were down near 520 or 515 even.
You know, when I think when Walmart did it, like as you get a little bit more traction to the upside, as we get closer or through earnings season, you hear, you know, the cloudiness on the horizon,
the uncertainty, the da-da-da, then it might not be as easy to say,
hey, it's better than feared.
So, but I don't, you know, would I say that the low of 481 in the Spies
is the low of 2025?
It's hard to say, but I would think we revisit that at some point,
but I think we could
see 555 to 560 before that. But, you know, I got to see a lot of things from the market to confirm
how big I want to get to play. I think, you know, I think is really compelling right here. I think
Bitcoin, you know, I'm not a Bitcoin guy. I'm not one of those, you know, but I trade Bitcoin a
decent amount. And it's held up pretty well. I think the weekly, I think the daily, I think coin you know i'm not a bitcoin guy i'm not one of those you know but i trade bitcoin a decent
amount and it's held up pretty well i think the weekly i think the daily i think it's trying to
poke up above this downtrend i think mister is acting well i think that's one thing i added to
um that i think that you could do options go out maybe friday go out a month um by the 49s by the
50s and i do think that um a lot of people made a lot of money in gold
in the last month or so. And now that probably needs a rest. So, you know, in the beginning of
the year, if you remember when Bitcoin went to 108, you know, I think the metals lagged and now
the metals just had a huge move. So maybe they're like, OK, if Bitcoin is supposed to be gold on
steroids, maybe it's time for it to wake up, and the chart looks pretty good to me.
Mike?
Yeah, I kind of like what Scott's saying, and I generally agree with him.
I actually think, Scott, we could probably get up to 574 or 75 if we break last Wednesday's high this week.
Not that big of a move to that area where the 200-day
and the 50-day are held up. And if you get any kind of short squeeze, I think we could see that. I think we can go a
little higher. I know it's a short week, too. That works against us. Markets are closed on Friday.
I think this market's trying to struggle off the tariffs. I think it's looking for clarity,
and the administration's not helping. It's completely confusing us as to what is covered, what's not, what's going on.
And the fact that we sold off when he spoke last time and we've been coming back steadily here, I think it just says the market just wants to be done with this.
It wants to move on, wants to focus on other things and earnings.
There's plenty of other problems out there, but I think it just wants to be done with this tariff thing and just,
and just try to move on. And I think we're trying to do that.
And I think Bitcoin, as you pointed out,
has disconnected itself from the market.
It started stabilizing over a week ago and it, you know,
it's just not dropping with the market anymore. So yeah,
I think you think you're onto something there. I really do.
All right, cool. Well, I like when smart people, you know,
think the same way and Not too many smart people
send sediments the wrong way, but I do think... I also think I have that blood in the street
account that a lot of people model their swing account with where it only went 50% in and like,
are you going to sell it here? I'm like, same way, I couldn't buy another tier because of the
way the market traded. I was already in 50% from there.
I'm like, you know what?
If we did see a move like you said up towards 570, I would probably have to reduce that
and then have some room if we were to revisit the lows at some point over the summer
if we're not done with the tariffs or if rates don't come in.
So trading is trading i i try and give a good
little lesson on my seven different accounts that i've learned how to navigate as i'm 52 years old
it takes a long time to to do that but like when i talk about the active account that's you know
just for day trading over emotion and then the swing account when you're above the 8 and 21 day
in the s&p which we're reclaiming some things and then the box account when you're above the 8 and 21 day in the S&P, which we're reclaiming some things.
And then the box account and then the option account for binary events just in case things are nuts and you don't feel like holding.
And then longer term, the 401k, which every single month you have to put money in, the 403b, the 529.
And then the blood in the street account is always the account that everyone's the most interested in because everyone always would love to have some cash lying around for when it's blood in the street.
And it did probably get to a little bit of blood in the street when we had that gap down last Monday.
But, you know, usually I typically don't reduce that until we're back at all time highs in the S&P.
And I just I don't think that's going to be something this year.
So I have more room.
I'm not sure we won't get there this year but i don't
i don't think it's quick i actually i agree you know here's a long way guidance comes in maybe
this stuff gets resolved but i'm with you i bought into the blood on wednesday last week
and i'm looking to trim it up around that 200 day moving average around that 574 i'm
exactly with you there i don't i don't think we're rushing back here to all-time highs
you know anytime in the near future this isn't going to be like the august 5th v bottom where
we're already back at high yeah in the september i don't think so either but i also got caught a
little short during that time period so i'm not one to talk that was that was that was kind of
nuts i i like to be long and i got caught selling premium trying to hedge some of my longs and the market just kept going that was the first time I really almost
like you're in a casino and there's like 11 reds and everyone starts betting
black it went to like 18 reds or 18 blocks actually because it was the other
side but anyway we won't we lived that moment yeah as far as like today from I
you know I came in long today in my trading account.
I had TQQQ and I had some spy calls that expire on Friday.
I cleared them out right on the open.
And honestly, the action today, I haven't really been trading.
I did one trade.
I caught GM on that news when Trump was speaking.
And other than that, I've been just saying I have this market today.
It's just not, the action is not good.
It's just not. You know what not good. It's just not.
Yeah.
You know what?
I had this.
I had calls also.
It was funny.
I had the 545s.
And I took them out long.
And I added to them on the close.
And we opened up at like 544.
I'm like, the 545s are only up 50 cents.
I'm like, what the hell is this?
I'm like, I better clear these out before they were zero.
Because I had them for today also.
So it almost like.
I had next Friday's 540s.
Well, those probably did a little bit better, but just because you're in the money.
But yeah, you have to be careful with different kind of option plays when the volatility in
the VIX is so high because you could be right before eight points and lose money.
I was like, wow, I should have just had the spies on, but obviously you can't have a stop
on overnight into an open.
So it's just like the market's changing and it's each week, every few days is a different
way to do it.
But it does feel like they kind of saved it today.
I would think like I added a little to Palantir.
I actually, that was one of my new, like, you know, I put that on today and I added
a little bit.
I think, you know, that if we go up, that's something a little safer than other things.
I think, I do think NVIDIA is going to wind up taking out 114, 115 this week.
If we hang in there, that to me feels something where you could kind of manage that.
Like I said before, I like Dash.
I think Baba, a lot of people, I kind of screwed it up last week
because there was that rumor going around that they were going to delist the Chinese ADRs,
and I wound up getting out of it.
And today, it's pretty strong all day.
I think, you know, that might have a little bit more room,
but then you have to be a little bit in the mercy of those headlines.
Robinhood, actually, I edited it, or not edited it,
I kind of put it on top of my go-to list a little bit more
because that was actually one of the names that took out last Wednesday's high
already on Friday.
So Robinhood, I think, is something that's getting a lot more traction. I think a lot more institutional interest again. It's not just the meme type of scenario. So that's something I would
say, you know, if you're not in it, you have time, something just to chart and get familiar and could
be something, you know, for later this year that could just outperform other things.
I kind of like it better than Reddit lately.
Anybody? Anybody?
Yeah, we did.
Sorry, I was jumping back in.
I saw Sam had a hand up, but he got rugged,
so I was going to try to get his hand first.
Sam, if you're up, we'll go over to you,
and then Logical's got a hand up.
Going once, going twice.
All right, Logical, let's go over to you and get your thoughts.
Yeah, generally about this market,
I think if you're a trader, it's a great market.
I'm still not fully convinced on what
the outcomes are going to be in america uh i'm not saying that from like uh it's going to be
extremely doom and gloom or whatnot but i mean it's clear that they want the tariffs to stick
anytime you get any sort of walk back the walkbacks backs get walked back. And it's just like, no,
like he wants this in place. And so even if the tariffs are not 120, 140%, they're still going to
be 20%. I mean, that's a big hit to earnings. And that just changes the structural profitability of
a lot of companies. And again, those are, you know, the things we heard about this weekend are
to do with semis and electronics.
But there's still a lot of industries that are going to be impacted much more than that.
So I think right now, if I'm being honest, it feels really tough to be confidently long U.S. growth stocks.
And I think that if there is any sort of pivot in the policy,
then I would get way more confident.
But if things remain the way they do, I just personally like I have very minimal exposure to that.
I mean, you can see, like, it seems pretty obvious at this point that we're probably going to see a recession
if we don't see any sort of, I don't know, any sort of pivot or anything.
Because I just don't, yeah, I mean, like a lot of companies are going to have to do layoffs.
Unemployment is probably going to have to tick up, especially if this is going to be weighing down on their bottom line and margins.
So, yeah, it just, it doesn't feel like a great backdrop to be investing in US growth equities.
If you're trading them, I think they can make for great trades.
I think that long term, if you're DCA, you'll probably be fine.
But I think that while this overhang is still around, it is just like, I would just expect
that, you know, how can you, how can you expect the market to rally um unless there is some sort of pivot
because this will have real impacts and we don't really know the full extent of that so i'd wait
for a little bit less murkiness for that and you know obviously in a lot of past drawdowns uh you
know you could say um you know we price in a lot in the stock market. I think there's a stat that's like the stock market bottoms nine months before earnings bottom.
But these tariff policies are huge changes to a lot of businesses.
So it's really tough to determine.
I just don't know what the real downstream effects are going to be.
And so especially when you're coming into this period with elevated valuations. So, you know,
it's possible that we started discounting lower earnings now, but, you know, it's a double whammy
in these situations where you're in a growth environment in 2024. Now in 2025, you have tough
comps year over year so you're definitely
going to see earnings decline um and then on top of that you know should we be paying these high
multiples for earnings that are potentially uh you know declining so there's a double whammy there of
like not just earnings are coming down but the the, you know, multiples coming down.
So yeah, it's like a double contraction for me. Yeah.
I mean, so for me, I'm trying to, I'm still fully long, but I'm not long.
Um, a lot of the names that I really like, um, like businesses I really like until I
can see a little bit more of this dust settle and use me as a contra if you want.
And hopefully, so let me ask you a question.
What do you fully, if you're fully long and you don't like the backdrop, what are you fully long?
Nobody's going to like what I say, but I have over 60% of my portfolio in biotech.
And I have about –
Three weeks ago, that was a little tough.
It was.
Wasn't it undervalued three weeks ago?
It was really tough.
It was really tough, especially when that FDA commissioner was –
I think we basically have had peak pessimism.
The XBI touched the lows of October 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, just last week.
And it bounced really hard today.
It's a leading index plus 3% on the day.
The reason why I like, and it's like the only, oh, let me see.
Now a lot of other indexes are coming, but it's the only one that put in new highs of day.
Here's how I see it.
It's the complete opposite of US growth and tech because the valuations that were coming in are extremely low.
You know, most of the names i own are still commercial stage
they're growing 50 quarter over quarter these are you know healthcare products commercially
approved already uh so there's no fda trials needed uh like a name like arcutis a rqt um that
thing is putting up 50 growth quarter recorded that's not going to slow down so i think that
here's my thesis is like, people are going to look for
growth where they can find it. And there's always a bull market somewhere. So I do think that we're
still in this bear market for sure. I don't think we're ready to go into a bull market until there's
some sort of resolution. And I think that, you know, if I, but I feel like coming into this with
lower valuations and a spot in the market where they're going to continue to see growth. And in my view, they're going to see beaten raises.
Tariffs, people talking about pharma tariffs, these biotech companies are very interesting
because they have 80 to 90% gross margins.
So even if you get a 10, 20% tariff on your COGS, your COGS are 10, 20%.
That's like an increase of, that's like a two or 4% max hit to your margins.
It's not a big deal.
So I think that, you know,
these companies are still very well positioned
and they're coming from, you know,
extremely low valuations.
The clinical side, the clinical stage names
actually are rallying the hardest today,
rightfully so, because those names have been punished
for absolutely no reason other than rates have been high,
but many names up six, 10% on my list that I'm long in. Many of those names are late stage,
phase three, having data this year, trading below the cash on their balance sheet. I mean,
there's extremely low valuations. There's extreme pessimism. And I think now we're starting to see
that bounce back potentially. It's been a really tough place to be for the last four years.
And I haven't been, I think a lot of these things take, you know, the timing of rotation.
But, you know, when we're looking into where we're headed as a U.S. economy, it clearly
looks like we're slowing down.
There's a lot of uncertainty.
But I think when it comes to medicine, health care, those are probably the things that are
going to hold up if we get any sort of economic slowdown.
And you couple that with extremely low valuations.
Some of these, you know, biotechs that are, you know, mid caps are, you know, recently commercially approved.
They're just now hitting their ramp in revenues.
So they're growing really fast.
It's going to be tough to find that anywhere else in the market.
So that's a big part of my portfolio. And then the other big chunk, which I decided to mostly reenter back today,
is Latin American names, Brazil and Colombia.
They are, I feel like, the tariff winners.
They have the smallest tariff percentages applied to them.
I feel like they're mostly out of the news, which is great to see.
I think they're just building a lot down there. And the economies are changing. I think a lot of them can go the way
of Argentina and Javier Mille. You know, you have Chile, Colombia, Brazil, with potential
right wing candidates to win elections the next one to two years. I think it was Ecuador today that had some election
victory to the right-wing party just announced today. I don't think that's what it was. But
anyway, so I think they could be setting up really nicely. And right now, just when you're
looking at U.S. opportunities, I feel like there's, it feels like there's more opportunity outside of
the U.S. So again, I will be 100% willing to change my mind and switch back to U.S.
growth in tech and all that stuff.
But I think it's still just a little bit too murky.
And, like, you know, one thing Saturday, everyone was bullish because of the semi and, you know, electronic equipment stuff.
Next day, they come out and say, actually, no, that's not the case.
It's like, dude, it's a heart attack investing right now in u.s growth i think so um but again if you're dcaing
long term you like these businesses you know i'm sure you're gonna be fine on the other side of it
um but i'm you know i think that until something material changes in the policy
It's gonna be a pretty rough year I would say if not longer
it's gonna be a pretty rough year i would say if not longer
Okay, well you do have a point of reference just like everybody else does with the XBI put a low in
You know last week and trying to poke its head above this little lower range you have a 75 in change
It's above it. So I think you know you probably if I was to look technically here
There's a you know that gap gap from wherever it was, March 31st.
So maybe, you know, if the S&P is going to get to the 200-day, not saying it is, but if it does, you could probably see, you know, a nice move back towards 8182.
And that just doesn't even have to need, doesn't probably need a thesis, but you seem to have a really well-thought-out thesis.
So it's probably something good for people to look at and, you know, put some money there,
I would say.
Yeah.
And again, yeah, it comes down to, you know, I'm hoping that at some point down the line
we'll actually have bifurcation in the market.
I think all equities have been essentially trending together.
But I do hope that as the picture becomes clearer and as we get to earning season, like
what I'm expecting from earning season, I think everyone else's is, you know, the guidance being pulled.
I think you were mentioning that for Delta Airlines.
Like we are expecting many of these U.S. companies to pull guidance.
I don't expect biotech companies to pull their guidance.
I don't see why they would.
And I expect them to, you know, beat and potentially race.
So we'll have to see.
Right. you know, beat and potentially race. So we'll have to see, right? We won't know through earnings season,
but I'm thinking maybe earnings could be the catalyst to give bifurcation in
the market of what's going to do well from here and what's not.
But obviously still, you know, this is very, it's a tough,
tough environment for equities. I mean, shoot,
it's still a tough environment for bonds as well. I mean, I was,
I was thinking, you know, TLT, is that the move right now? And it,
you know, it very well could be but um there's just still so much uncertainty with how things are trending i
would say it is still a tough trade uh for a lot of things the more i think about it and you know
ultimately i do think the fed is going to come out and support through qe uh if it comes to it but
you know if i if i was thinking about a low rate exposure play i i do like biotech more and the
reason why i say that is i mean just today pfizer came out and they had a fail uh they like
discontinued their um phase two drug uh for obesity and i think they i saw a quote that
said something like they have 12 to 15 billion dollars to invest in their pipeline so they're
going to go out and make acquisitions and this is something i've been talking about for a very long time is that there are companies
literally trading for pennies on the dollar i mean they are trading for below the cash on their
balance sheet um so you know my question is is has the macro environment changed at all to be
going that way and would you be better off of adding these to the list of when you want as a
trader want to be tactical?
Because obviously from a long-term investing perspective, when we're talking about SPY and QQQ,
it's a very different conversation when we're talking about individual stocks and very different within that when we're talking about from a trading perspective. So why even
try and find that stuff right now as opposed to just kind of sitting out and maybe taking less plays or trying to, I don't know.
Why be fully allocated right now with that kind of general mindset?
Yeah, again, I think it comes down to there's always a bull market somewhere. And I think that
these assets are trading for extremely cheap valuations fundamentally. I don't think that
a lot of tech is trading as cheap as people say they are because we don't really know what those forward earnings are.
So, you know, while people are quoting all sorts of PE multiples, we don't really know the downstream effects of these tariffs.
And it does feel like they want to keep them in place.
So for as long as they do keep them in place, it's still going to be an uphill battle.
And I know that, you know, some stocks are down 20, 30 percent from the large gap tech.
And maybe we've discounted enough.
Maybe we haven't.
But I think, again, some of these tariffs are going to be structurally changing these margin profiles.
So whereas, you know, I don't think that biotech has that same headwind.
So, yeah, I mean, look, I will say it's been extremely tough to be long something, anything at this point,
because all equities have been moving together.
So, you know, there is really no bifurcation.
But I'm hoping that at some point we do see see that considering that we are coming into this completely opposite ends
growth should accelerate um because these businesses will continue to do well and the
starting valuations are very cheap uh so from a fundamental investor hat on rather than a trading
hat on i i think that there's really cheap assets out there in this sector and they've been
essentially left for dead and we have max pessimism i mean the fba commissioner resigned uh through he's some beef he had with rfk i mean rfk
is leading the hhs which is you know people have been speculating is horrible for you know scientific
progress and it's just a lot of noise there but when you kind of tune out some of that noise and
you see what these assets are trading for uh it does feel like there's a ton of opportunity and again these valuations at least like again
the clinical stages so let's so wait let's um yeah i don't want to interrupt you but like you
know you did a lot of work and you're just going with the xbi what a give like five names where
they're trading oh yeah he's on the dollars some kind of, acquisition talk and alpha. Yes. Yes.
So I don't own XBI.
I own only individual names.
I probably own like, I don't know, 12
commercial stage names and clinical stage names.
So I'll give you a couple from the commercial stage side
that we've talked about on here is our cutis a RQT.
They're growing 50, 60% quarter over quarter. Again, those are
these are really good businesses, I would say they just won their patent, like ruling,
so they're not at any risk of anything. Yeah, so ARQT is really good. SWTX had some rumors
that they were going to get bought out by Merck for over $60 a share.
Then equity markets started falling.
And so the price has fallen back down to sub 40.
SWTX is very cheap based on the peak sales of the two drugs that they have.
So these are, you know, commercial stage names, Spray, ARS, Pharmaceuticals.
They have an EpiPen newly launched commercial stage company. They have an EpiPen newly launched commercial stage company they have
an EpiPen replacement there's no injection stuff like that it's the same management team that took
Narcan and commercialized it to a 95% market share so that's like a game-changing technology there
so those are three names on the commercial side so it's AR a r qt swt x s p r y i would say those are probably
three of the strongest on the uh commercial side i would say for pennies on the dollar on the
clinical stage side you have a company called regenx bio rgnx they have data coming out later
this year they have three phase three trials one of them is partnered with abby uh this stock is
trading for six dollars and 33 cents through the milestone payments they'll
receive by the end of uh h1 they'll have about 14 of cash per share on the balance sheet and
they're trading at six dollars and they're trading for less than half of the uh cash on the balance
sheet they have huge partnerships with pharma names on three phase three trials so that's three
shots on goal um yeah i mean there's so many scenarios
that's good no i'm just saying a lot of you know sometimes i like to when i you know have my
subscribers in the senate like i want to talk you know they could they want exposure to the bios
xbi at least you know you're not in the way of a blow up but you could like you said if it starts
outperforming you're creating alpha but then there are people like hey you know let's do a little deeper dive and go for things that could
double triple quadruple versus just you know show a few extra you know percentage points or basis
points and you know what else i'll say to that scott is like i'm very much a small cap guy but
i'm not an iwm guy i have tried trading iwm but just because iwm is a garbage index doesn't mean
you're not going to find some gem small caps, right?
And so I think the same kind of falls here is that even though the XBI has been a basically
very poor index over the last couple of years, there have been a lot of biotech outperformers.
It's just, yeah, stock picking is pretty tough in this, but when you get to these kinds of
valuations and, you know, the environment ahead, relatively speaking for the sector is
much more favorable.
So I think, you know, that, again, that's kind of what I'm looking for as a potential catalyst to see bifurcation and see how performance for these.
But yeah, I mean, some of these, again, like Rocket Pharmaceuticals, RCKT, I mean, these things are absolutely decimated.
I mean, this thing's up 13% today.
Anyways, I'll stop there. We'll talk too much about this.
But anyways.
Yeah, good bio talk up 13% today. Anyways, I'll stop there. We'll talk too much about this. But anyways. Yeah, good bio talk.
Good bio talk.
And honestly, hey, listen, he asked what stocks do you like,
and you came in with a couple ones to go in and look into.
I actually pulled up the ARQT one on Finch.
I was like, are the numbers actually going up here?
And then, yeah, I mean, operating revenue looked decent.
At least there's good growth there.
But I wanted to bring Shai into the conversation here.
Keep us going along and see what you're bringing, Shai.
What are you watching?
Yeah, so today was nice to see somewhat of an intraday bounce from going red.
I think we're just in a really extended digestion period.
That's what's going
to happen. And listening to previous speakers' commentary, I agree with the majority of it,
where we're not going to have a V-shaped recovery. I'm fairly confident we're going to have a new
all-time high this year. I think the hangover from this tear for it is absolutely real.
And even if the sandbox is being formed now on what the risk
control is going to be on this enterprise level the psychological damage
has been made already on consumers and enterprises why is that the second
guessing because there is zero confidence right now on what's being
said if it's gonna be backtracked just hours later just look over the weekend
like we all got hyper bullish like what logical was saying on saturday then luck nick came hours later count essentially saying something
slightly different that's causing more confusion like there's the k the chaos continues essentially
so either this is by design or truly trump is on the same page with his uh mates i don't know
but either way it's not helping confidence enterprise or
consumer level. And that's going to cause second guessing on the enterprise level. If you're C
suite, you're not going to be as adamant to continue your CapEx plan for this year and go
all out when you don't know the risk parameters this time next week, this time next month. You
just don't know because the goal post is changing
quickly it's same thing with the hiring freezes you're going to freeze on hiring because
you don't know if your initiatives are going to become a near-term reality you have to kick them
count down the kick the can down the road until there's more clarity uh no board is going to
green light any kind of major initiatives that's going to cause a huge capex spike when they just have no confidence with the macro environment is going to be.
That's enterprise level.
And you're going to see that in the conference calls, this upcoming earnings cycle where
A, they're going to be conservatives because nobody wants to stick their neck out or B,
they take guidance completely down because they need more clarity in the environment.
There's too much noise and they don't feel confident in guiding that's going to be the two options i really don't think there's going to be
a third where it's a beat and a raise i just don't see that that would be pretty ballsy and kudos to
them if they if there are names like that that shows a ton of relative strength in this environment
that maybe you should dig into more that they're the unicorns of this mess that we're in they probably have a
defensible moat in some way and on a consumer level like you're going to see their behavior
changing because they're reading the headlines they're seeing goods going up this that and right
now we're in somewhat of a vacuum demand vacuum because people want to get ahead of it but things
are were pretty bad before this tariff war on the consumer side, and now it's
getting worse. So I think there is going to be a psychological hangover that's going to last a lot
longer than people anticipate, and it's going to be an anchor to any kind of real rally we're going
to experience in the market, and the earnings are going to be impacted just because of the
conservatism that's required now in this environment.
So I think that this is the time where we're going through the digestion period.
Well, the April 7th, I think, was on bottom.
It was due for technical balance and short coverings.
But now I think this is where the digestion period happens.
We still have to cross the 200-day moving averages.
We're still a ways from that. We're at 460 for Qs.
200-day moving average is at 49 cues like we're at 460 for cues 200 day
moving average at 493 like we're at eight eight percent away like that's a substantial distance
that's going to take some time to even recover technically speaking and if i'm part of the camp
that earnings cycle will be more of a headwind than a tailwind then i do think that it's not going to
probably break above that level anytime soon uh if it if it does kudos, like I'm full, I'm almost fully invested.
I have 95% invested on 5% cash.
I added significantly a week or so ago, and now I need to build up my cash reserve a bit
in my DC plan every week I put cash in.
And, uh, I do believe there's going to be some great opportunities in this earning cycle
because it's going to be noisy.
And when there's noisiness because it's going to be noisy.
And when there's noisiness, there's going to be some overreactions.
And that's when I think there's some early disruptors and key secular growth themes with
a ton of runway.
Like everyone's forgetting about the fourth industrial revolution.
It's still there.
Like maybe stage one is maturing, but stage two is just getting started.
There's going to be some early disruptors in that space that are going to get oversold
because there's this uh
not fear-mongering but like this pain cycle that we're in that's going to come and go
it always does eventually and the winners that come out of it are going to be the ones
that have the sickiest ecosystem most scalable products the greatest competitive advantage in a
thematic has a ton of runway like it's all about time horizon if you have a five plus year
out timeline this is kind of the opportunity where you really allocate your soldiers in the sideline
like when the vix is a 50 handle i don't retreat i that's when i go in because that's when the
opportunities are when there's so much fear in the market it's typically oversold and near term but
like i also don't think it's gonna be v-shaped. So I can see a new lower low sometime in Q2,
and that's fine if you built the conviction
by doing the research and you know the names
that you want to add in the long term.
But there might be more pain down the road.
But either way, it looks like we have a near term bottom.
We have a sandbox.
There's some glimpse of strategy by POTUS,
which we didn't really have a week ago.
Now we have someone, all right, 20%. He's being somewhat reasonable.
There's a sandbox of risk we can maneuver around.
It's still not exactly where we need it to be.
It's still going to impact earnings, sentiment, confidence, etc.
But it's not as blind as it was before.
So I don't know. today i did no moves um
i really probably won't be doing any moves into our earnings season and then get some more clarity
from my positions then uh don't feel the urgency to add but i also don't really feel the urgency
to sell it's more just wait for the opportunities if the vix is a 50 handle and we see more blood
like we experienced a week ago, I'll
probably start adding.
But right now, it's no man's land.
It's kind of a gray area where you don't add, you don't sell, you just wait and be
patient.
I'll pass back to you.
Wait, I have a question.
So if the consumer is strapped, if companies are going to guide down,
and if some of the valuations need to readjust, how do we get to all-time highs?
And why are we 95% invested if all those things have to happen?
Oh, did I just speak? I said we're not going to hit all-time highs.
Okay, I'm sorry. I heard we were going to get all-time highs. No, guys, we're not hitting all-time highs.
Okay.
My bad.
Thank God you let us know.
You know, it's funny.
I literally made it the title because you said that right when I was making the title.
So I just changed it again.
No new all-time highs in 2025?
There you go.
I think both of you guys are a little too...
I just saved your life, Jay. 25 question mark there you go i think both you guys are a little too and i just i think i just
saved your life jay just someone's gonna clip that that looked like a schmuck that pretty
yeah well now we had tom but now now if it also happens shy then now you can just take that clip
edit everything else out and be like i told you guys smart smart guy right there thinking ahead
of it hey somebody else said i still think we could make all-time highs today this year i still everything else out and be like, I told you guys. Smart guy right there. Think ahead of him.
Somebody else said, I still think we could make all-time highs today,
this year. I still think we could get up there this year. I don't think it's
not possible to get to
all-time highs. Market forgives
and forgets and moves on pretty quickly.
I think we need to move.
We were up 9% in a day.
Yeah.
Confidence does take time to build back up.
Like, we lost a lot of confidence.
Confidence isn't V-shaped.
That's the issue.
But if you have big earnings and if tech names offer good guidance, if they offer guidance, which I question what they're going to do, again, it's going to put confidence back into the market.
Maybe not in what's going on with tariffs, but maybe back into the markets.
I'm just saying, I wouldn't rule out got we got nine months left this year to get
to all-time odds i mean yeah i'm not saying 100 confidence is not gonna happen i 100 agree with
you but the majority of my decision makings my base camp is that's not gonna be the case but i
hope i'm wrong like listen if meta i think meta is the first mac 7 usually reports every cycle
besides i know netflix i don't count count Netflix because they're not really exposed to tariffs as much as the other big tech names.
You got Tesla next week.
Tesla, I mean, Tesla's a shit show for something other than other big tech.
I don't know what the first big tech name is, but if the Googles, Amazons, or Metas,
those are the three names that's kind of like monitoring a tightrope right now among the Mac 7 of tariff impact.
But they also have an infrastructure layer that's hardening.
Like if they guide up and you're seeing business as usual,
I do think that's a massive sentiment catalyst that might take the market.
Like, Oh,
things are as bad as feared and continue going along with the party.
Hopefully that's right.
I just don't think that would be the case.
You know, I think that the general consensus is that we're not going to reach all-time highs this year.
With the exception of a few people saying that.
But, I mean, the fact of the matter is no one actually knows.
I mean, if we make all-time highs, I'm just not going to be surprised if that happens.
going to be surprised if that happened. Just seeing the way that the market has generally
Just seeing the way that the market has generally trended up since 2022.
trended up since 2022. And even overall, if you just go back, if you go back to 2008, it's just
been in a gigantic melt-up scenario where dips are just getting bought no matter what. And to think,
I actually made a post this morning. I was like, do you think this can be a lost decade? I think
that name has been passed around a little bit here and there, but I mean, it can happen. I think
people are definitely conditioned to buy the dip, especially with the passive funds constantly investing into the market nowadays.
But I think there's something else to be said, the fact that gold is just making new all-time highs every single week.
I mean, this isn't exactly a cheap market cap when you think of gold as far as the total amount of funds that are invested in it.
Like that's money that gets invested in gold and it usually just stays there. It doesn't necessarily
get sold or traded or anything similar like Bitcoin. Bitcoin could be extremely volatile,
gold generally not as volatile. And when you have the price of gold constantly going up,
that's pretty much liquidity that just stays there for the most part.
When you think about rates though, rates have come down quite a good amount, which actually
puts a lot more liquidity into the system since they're not necessarily in the bonds.
But I mean, that can change. I mean, the move index has been pretty volatile lately,
pretty heightened, similar to the VIX. VIX was around 60 just a couple of days ago.
And then now VIX is back in the, I haven't checked, actually. I think it's back in the
sub-30s, actually. So I mean, we'll see what happens, but it is pretty tough to say.
Yeah, go for it, dude.
You said the lost decade. So is it the lost decade from 2025 to 2035? Like, when does the
decade start?
Well, I'm not saying that it's a lost decade. I'm just bringing up the term, but whenever
people say lost decade, I think they're referring to pretty much the entire decade, but we could
just basically just go sideways.
I don't know how old you are.
There was a lost decade from 2001 to 2011.
We were in a range for a decade.
So I'm just saying like a lot of people bring up old stuff and old cobwebs and old fears.
Like I'm saying, like a lost decade, that's a big statement.
So for the next decade or is it just like for 10 months?
Or is it?
I think, well, just to preface, I'm not saying there's going to be a lost decade.
I'm the same with Shai.
I'm generally just long the entire market, not necessarily looking to trade the majority of my portfolio or anything.
Just have a few percentage cash.
So, of course, I'm rooting for the market to continue going up.
But if 2025 ends up being an accumulation year,
I wouldn't mind that either.
I mean, when you think about the fact that we're more than 10%.
By the way, that's a good term, 2025 accumulation year.
Yeah, actually it's Shai's the one that coined that term.
I'm just saying that that probably is the case more than a lost decade.
But I hear you.
I'm just like there's a lot of people that throw around titles and titles of articles to get things read.
And it doesn't really do many people a lot of favors out there.
That's what a lot of the networks try and do also.
Scott, wasn't this –
Generational buying opportunity.
Weren't the 70s a lost decade as well, if I remember correctly?
I know that yes the 70s consolidated for the roaring 80s and the go-go 90s and then the lost yeah 2001 was really a lost
decade i remember because there was a thousand percentage points of movement with like seven
different ascending and descending channels i think i looked at that the only reason why it's
funny that you said that because i just looked at that that chart also i went over it like a weekend ago my guy i actually said this
could be like a three four year you know range that burns off what we just what just took place
since the you know since 2012 to here so um yeah so there definitely could be a bunch of years here
where it's like wow you know we have to go sideways for a year like maybe might take three
years to get to an all-time high again but there could be a lot of money made long term from you
know guy keep you know people in their 20s and 30s that continue to contribute to their 401k and all
that kind of stuff because that's what builds their average cost for the next run and then as far as a
trader it's a big difference in the range trade versus which you could also always find some
names within a range that act better and make new highs. You see those, but it could be, I think, we got to come up with a cute name maybe
for the triple threat deck, triple threat consolidation. I don't know.
Yeah. I was more asking about this, because I think they say that about the 70s, but I was more
asking because if you just go back and look at the chart for anybody that gets panicked about some of these terms, just look at what it did during the 70s.
And then if I told you you had to wait 10 years to get the return after it, that's basically what I was asking you.
Yeah.
No, I think there's time periods.
These patterns go through time periods and different cycles.
We definitely could have peaked, and this could be one of those three month four you know three year four year phases where it's
like it's not that exciting you have to adjust you can't pay up there's very limited leadership
names and you know because again it's been like a crazy move there's been you know a lot of a lot
of investors are pretty damn spoiled you know with the action that we saw especially after the
pandemic in 2020 i don't think anyone would have thought that year we'd go down 35% and then a year later be at all-time highs before
the 2021 growth debacle into the new highs of last year. So there might be a time where we
actually do kind of consolidate for multiple years and we're going to all have to adjust and you know do have a lot of hobbies yeah that was actually two and a half years of consult well we didn't make new all-time
highs for two and a half years since 2021 and in fact uh even 2001 i don't think we actually broke
out to do all-time highs or even past all-time highs in 2016 because if i i think i remember
looking at chart in 2007 we kind of had a double top there
and then we pulled back and then tested it in 2016. And then that's when we finally broke out
and made and broke out in the market. And that was a 16, 17, 15 year consolidation. And that can
happen. I think, I think it does happen. That's why I was asking him like, well, so 2025, we talk
until 2035, like I was kind of being a little sarcastic, but I was like. I'm like, well, so 2025, we talk until 2035. Like I was kind of being a
little sarcastic, but I was like, wow, this, this, that would kind of be something. I better check
your age. I'm 52. So if it happens for 10 years, okay, we'll break out from 62 to 67. Then I'll
cash in all my long-term accounts that I was accumulating. Yeah, that, that would be, I mean,
if you really think about it, if that happens, that wouldn't actually be the worst thing in the world because that would reset everything.
So in that way, people aren't in this, oh, let me just continue buying the dip aggressively for every single pullback that we get.
In my opinion, I think that, like you said, people are just conditioned to do that.
And people do forget that the market doesn't, as much as people get used to the market basically going up every single year,
every single day,
every single month,
it can do the exact opposite thing.
In fact, what was it?
Meta would not stop going up
for like, what was it?
A record of 18 trading days in a row.
Meta was up.
And then look what happened.
Look what happened in the last few weeks.
Yeah, 21.
21 days.
What happened in the last few weeks?
It was like,
Meta just keeps going down, right?
And the opposite can exactly happen we went against
seasonality in fall of 2024 where the market was just going up regardless of seasonality after
august 5th and then here we are we're going down against seasonality and wasn't wasn't isn't april
supposed to be a very bullish month so like what if that doesn't exactly happen and even so we're
still we're still red year to date and even if we do somewhat recover to being green
year to date, that is pretty far away. It's not exactly close, but yeah, we could easily have
another Wednesday where we go up like eight or 10%. But at the same time, I think in this current
scenario, I think the market is just waiting for that clarity when it comes to earnings.
I think the market is just waiting for that clarity when it comes to earnings.
Usually we do have that run into earnings, and we could have it.
But at the same time, I think the market just needs more clarity in terms of how the tariffs and how the economic slowdown has been going on lately and all these economic factors.
How is that factored into the numbers that a lot of these cfos and and accounting departments calculating
crunching the numbers how how is that going to turn out are they bullish or are they not bullish
especially when you think of a lot of the companies that are importing a lot of things from china
are they going to increase their prices are they going to reduce guidance like is amazon a little
bit worried here even though they're not exactly importing all the products they do import a lot
of products especially the third-party sellers is is this- Well, look at Amazon today. Amazon was the first one to go red today, down 1.2%.
Not everything is bouncing with that news over the weekend.
So yeah, I hear you.
I can't see management being so aggressive anywhere, to be honest.
I think that they're all going to take the cue and say we're allowed to not give guidance
and not be punished individually
because unless the market, if we're at the 200-day and the spies and the queues in a
week or so, then they're going to get punished.
If we're here or lower, maybe they could float around a little bit.
It all depends on where we're at when some of these companies, the major ones, come out
and either pull guidance or reduce guidance.
But I can't see many of them being optimistic at all either.
either. Yeah. I've heard, I've heard a lot of people ask, you know, is Amazon a good buy here?
Even like some people say like Amazon is, Amazon is such a big discount over here. And it's like,
you know, you got it. You got to remember, right. If you're comparing it to where Amazon was
in 2024, around the two forties, what what was that just like the other month or whatever but
if you compare that yeah amazon is definitely cheaper and historically amazon is trading
at a much cheaper valuation well i guess not right now it's in the 180s but
at the same time it's like it can be cheaper relative to previous valuations but at the same
time is it a generational buy probably not i think I think 2022. By the way, go to the weekly chart, look at Meta.
Meta went down to – Meta was 88 in 2022.
It's at 532.
It went below 100 during that whole correction phase from 2021.
Amazon, where was Amazon?
Amazon was – in 2023, it was 84.
So it's, you know, I'm just saying, yeah,
like you're saying, anything could happen.
That's why you can't have a false sense of security.
Some things probably shouldn't have been where they were.
That's why we also use moving averages too for the,
you know, instead of seasonality,
I'd rather see traders say,
hey, is the S&P above the 8-21 day it is?
Who cares what month it is?
We'll stay with that until the trend changes and we get signals. it's below it and then the 50 day happens or the 200 day
happens and if you build a 200 day it doesn't matter where or what month it just it's just
you know it's that week the price is telling you that institutions aren't jumping in there and
it's a spot to have a lot less on you can't can't be 95 percent invested to be honest for some of
you guys that are new when you're below the 200 day You can't be 95% invested, to be honest, for some of you guys that are new
when you're below the 200-day.
You guys are 95% invested.
How do you do that?
I mean, I can respond to that
because I was the one who said that.
But I do contribute 1% a week into my portfolio.
So during the month of November to February,
I somehow all of a sudden accumulated 18% cash position
because I did no adding. So I when I add if I decide to add today
I'm I'm gonna have more cash coming in where I can probably add at a discount
price next week same assets that's just like my DC plan but what I've been
advising like a lot of my subscribers since we broke the 200-day moving
average people are have a fixed portfolio they're not like me I fully
aware of that I'm not delusional you raise a substantial cash position and when the vix is a 50 you can
allocate i don't know a third of it uh but i want to go all like 95 in right now below the 200 day
because stage four is when you lose your money and it probably can get worse you just never know
so i just want to add that color pass it back to back to you, Scott. So you treat this kind of like a 401k where every month you add 1%. So that's kind of different,
but you do it with names instead of like a lot of people 401ks, they'll do,
you know, a match thing where every month they just put it into funds, not names. So you are,
you're modeling doing it into names, not funds, can get alpha But also have to just be careful because they come in a little bit more
Yeah, no, I mean, I'm sure the panel can agree like I have a little too much of a romantic relationship my holdings
Like I know the company's inside and out to an uncomfortable extent
So like I know which positions I'm adding and why I'm adding my thesis what's cracking what's breaking
So like if you a lot of people don't have the time to do that
So like I commit it's like a full-time job for me just to do update my model,
keep doing updating research thesis every single quarter, listen, all the
conference calls, like the management talk, um, to the cell side reading on
the channel checks.
Like I do all that stuff, but I think 95% of people should just be buying an
index.
But for me, I do the work, putting the work put in the work and I you find those gems like you find those palan
tears yeah no I've seen your work your work is very thorough and that could be
a whole different model for people like they have a 401k with funds and then if
they want someone that they trust it does the work like you you know that
they'll instead of the market coming back to highs up 20% from the lows
you'll make a hundred and fifty percent you know, because you'll have the leaders and it'll be just different stories.
So there's just a lot of different ways to do it.
So that's good that they know what they're getting into is that they're getting the alpha when the market's ready to let leaders lead.
Right now, we're still, like you said, a consolidation phase where things are building and trying to show that they're better than the market.
So when the market bounces, your leaders could actually triple versus just get back to highs.
Okay. Or 10 times in terms of pounds. Yeah. Or 10 times. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to jump in here
because Shai just lost his chief investment officer title, I think from Wolf. That was the
email that Evan was writing. But I do want to bring up that logical brought up
a great point was i talking there no you weren't talking i didn't try to write an email i just
think shy you know shy listen you lost one of your six titles just means that you still have five
but i think logical brought it up that there were stats this weekend that uh the the market bottoms
nine months into earnings or something like that when And when you track it back, you're about at the bottom. I'm in a high net worth group, like a group,
you can think of it like Raya, Tinder for rich people. And we talk about this stuff. And I think
you have to have like 5 million bucks, 6 million bucks in net worth in order to get in here. So
it's super high risk risk like people who have taken
risk i'm sorry i just have to jump it's 357 i have to do something with my radio and i apologize
okay i'm always 357. okay but but i'm in that group that group was very scared going into this
whole tariff thing they have since turned around but they're not doing what Shai's doing.
They turned around and they're buying into the indexes and their timeline is super, super
long.
So I know Logical brought it up kind of as a passing thing, but it was big in this group
on a bunch of individual stocks that you're going to have a lot of individual stocks that
is he cutting out for everyone else yeah hey gary you're you're cutting
all right yeah why don't we uh keep the conversation going around as we are coming
into the close gary you are cutting in and out so maybe you want to go down
re uh try connecting to something else.
Blake, you still have spoken yet.
We have two minutes to the close.
Really good conversation.
I agree with a lot of points that have been made.
I would just sort of, you know,
I approach markets from a very long-term perspective.
I'm a fundamental investor by nature,
but when you get into these types of environments,
I've sort of added technical analysis to my toolbox,
and I'm by no means some expert technician,
but I think when you can lean into what is actually happening in the moment, because these are the types of environments where fundamentals aren't as important in terms of like near term, you know, directional bets on where things might be going, at least from a probabilistic standpoint. So I see, look, despite this ongoing volatility,
and it's going to persist throughout this 90-day window,
because remember, this is Trump and the man thrives on chaos.
I think last week's price action suggests there's near-term stability
for the U.S. equity market.
I don't know if it's the final low, but I think it's a very durable, tradable low.
I think you're going to start to see the market
move in like a three-step forward,
two-step back type motion.
Multiple technical factors really came together
to show it was an important inflection
in the market last week.
When you're looking at breadth, volume capitulation,
at the same time when sentiment
had reached the most negative levels, like almost on record, depending on what you're looking at breadth, volume capitulation, at the same time when sentiment had reached the most
negative levels, like almost on record, depending on what you're looking at. I think technology
rebounding off prior cycle highs as support is another big reason for optimism, especially
given that momentum beta trade was like at the absolute focal point of the selling pressure in Q1.
So I think while trends and momentum will remain negative, you know, I think we have
tariff fatigue, which again, a lot of you guys have already, I'm not going to go into that.
And I think really anything marginally positive at the moment is going to be celebrated. You can
see it with the price action.
So for me, I think it's premature to state that this is a bear market.
Yes, on an intraday basis, we hit the 20% down.
NASDAQ was worse.
I get that the average stock has gotten beaten down.
But for me, I'm not as quite textbook on this, despite having like a CFA.
I, if I'm above those prior cycle highs, I'm talking late 2021, early 2022 and throw out
the Russell too, because a lot of that index is dog shit.
I still think that this is an event driven correction.
I part of my brain thinks that, you know, in three years, four years, we're going to look back at all of this and be like, what was this whole period?
It seems like nothing materially changed.
I think some trade deals will get reworked.
It will be net positive.
But I don't think we're going to have these, like, scary high rates for a long, long time.
scary high rates for a long, long time. You also have to consider that politics can have and flow
with administrations and midterms, and some of this gets pulled back. So I'm still a firm believer
that this is a major, don't get me wrong, a major correction within an ongoing bull market. But as
long as we're above those part of cycle highs, I think we push higher. I think near term on the SPY, you're looking obviously at 550. That's where everyone's looking
from there. It's 575. If you can exceed those levels, I think we have a high degree of confidence
that we won't necessarily maybe make a new all-time high into the rest of the year. But I
think that the corrective wave will be behind us. I think also that's really, really important focusing on, and we haven't really touched on this in the whole last hour, is all the Treasury weakness, the spread winding.
I think that's firmly what drove that Trump put last week.
Stocks were under major pressure, but you don't fuck around with the bond market.
with the bond market. And I think it's no coincidence that what was going on there with
either hedge funds kind of getting blown up or it was Japan as reported and maybe even some China
dumping. I don't think that's coincidence that all of that happened right on top of each other.
So I think near term treasuries, the move looks probably overdone, but it's worth monitoring.
I think near-term treasuries, the move looks probably overdone, but it's worth monitoring.
And this rise in 30-year yields comes at a time when inflation expectations on the short
run have remained pretty well anchored.
So a lot of this is probably real rates rising as a reflection of concern over tariffs, you know, potential lack of confidence in U.S. dollar assets, U.S. growth expectations.
What else?
Like market signals, I'll definitely be watching over the next couple of weeks.
I don't have to go through them in great length, but like the inverted VIX curve that we've had.
Again, we need to see some compression on volatility over shorted
date time frames and be looking at semiconductors like when i think about risk on corners of the
market like this this is the exact front and center of what should be working during the bull
cycle they got absolutely hammered in the first quarter i want to see them recover nicely financials
you know economy stocks like capital markets, banks, they're
full of information. If a recession is coming, the banks are going to be getting whacked. So I'll
be looking at that. Credit spreads, they've obviously widened out, but we never even got
close to sniffing even the 2022 highs on CCCOAS spread So and that's even below other points over the last 20 years.
So spreads have been remained contained in the fact that when I think of a VIX at 50,
I'm thinking credit spreads are potentially widening out a lot farther given the deterioration
in the macro backdrop. So I think that was a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question. I'll yield back to the group.
A lot of you have talked on earnings season.
Look, guys, we might get the second straight quarter.
Fourth quarter being very strong.
First quarter coming in potentially very strong.
No one's going to give a shit about it. Because obviously all that people care about is looking forward
and the guidance that may or may not come.
I'm of the thought, because I've seen it before, that the market is willing to discount or perhaps even overlook whatever is going to be reported from April to June in that July time period.
to June in that July time period, if we can get to a point where a lot of this macro nonsense
has essentially, you know, given us enough clarity that investors have gained confidence,
that CEOs, someone was talking before about confidence. I agree. It's been absolutely
washed out. You don't have to completely rebuild it overnight.
But if there's enough clarity and, you know, some semblance of like normal order of or order of business coming out of the White House, I think you could really see a meaningful uptick in market confidence, in market performance, in perhaps guidance. So I think
we're just going to have to throw out anything that's going to happen from April to June,
right or wrong. And with that, I'll just, I guess, stop talking. Thanks.
I have to comment on this, mostly because I'm inclined to agree with you. When you think about the amount of sentiment, you're just getting consensus. It's waffling back and forth. You get a lot of people saying, oh, we're bullish, oh, we're not bullish. We're done for. We're cooked. We're going to make new value and so on. When you think about the uncertainty in the market of how we were last Wednesday,
I would attribute that to peak uncertainty. We did not know what was going to happen with
these tariffs. This was three days before Trump announced the extension of the tariffs.
And then we saw that Walter Bloomberg did come out with that tweet saying that there was going
to be an extension. The market got very bullish from that and it quickly faded. And just thinking about the degree of the
aggressiveness of that sell-off. And I would even say that the aggressiveness of that sell-off was,
like you said, it was not like we were actually getting some real fundamental catastrophe in the
market. And I was also looking at credit spreads too. They were rising pretty quickly. I'm not
going to lie. And even the 10 year was at 4.5 and the third year was at 5%. And when we get to those levels at that
degree, like I think I was, I was putting tweets out that a 60 basis point move on the 10 year
in less than 48 hours, that's an obscene amount of selling in the bond market. The bond market,
in my opinion, is what really is dictating the direction we're going to go in the long-term.
The bond market sells off to that, the stock market will sell off and just the fact like you're saying
that the trump i would attribute i'll call that the trump pivot uh april uh april 12 is the i think
i'm going to say no april 9 april 9 is the day that trump pivoted right and he didn't pivot because
the stock market was dropping he pivoted because the bond market was falling off a cliff that is going to do a lot of damage in the entire world and
just thinking that since then we've bounced quite a considerable amount about eight percent since
then in the stock market or the inequities and people are still they don't believe the rally
they don't they think it's going to be sold off they think we're going to make lower lows or
whatever it is or maybe not make lower lows but we're going to continue to not be strong in the market. This sort of sets up for a melt-up
scenario. And I'm not saying that it's going to happen, right? I'm still cautious. I'm still
trying to build my cash position right now. I'm not planning on deploying any major capital anytime
soon. I haven't even pulled the emergency levers when it comes to the emergency deposits. I haven't
done that yet. I got more money to throw out the market if I need to, but I don't feel that we're at that time. I don't think this is
2022 levels where we need to do that. But we could be setting up for a melt-up scenario where it's
just going to be a lot of people constantly trying to take stab at the markets, constantly
covering the shorts over and over again, constant displeased, constant dips getting bought,
shallow dips getting bought, and just uncertainty, just being more certain. And I feel like as that certainty does
sort of come back to the market, or if you look at the other way around, if uncertainty stops
coming into the market, that's just going to provide investors more confidence slowly over
time. And I don't know how long it's going to take for the market to just continue melting up.
And in my opinion, I do not like melt-ups. Melt-ups are not a fun scenario when you think of the market,
because that's when fundamentals don't necessarily change, or if they do change,
they get a little bit worse, but the market just goes up anyway. It just throws a lot of people off. Obviously, for the long-term perspective, it's not really a big deal, but from a short-term
perspective, it throws people off. It throws in a lot of uncertainty in terms of sentiment in
the market, but it's almost as if people have no choice but to go long to chase or be afraid to
short. And that is the perfect recipe for a melt-up. And against all odds, that can happen.
I mean, anything can happen really, but I tend to agree that that might be happening right now.
I don't want it to happen because I want this year to be an accumulation year,
but I mean, if it happens,
I'm pretty sure a lot of people will not be happy about that.
All right, let's go to Wolfie and then let's bring Stock Talk into it.
All right, so I need to be a little bit more pessimistic.
I think in general, from a positioning standpoint and from a paint trade standpoint, the short term move is higher.
I've thought this for a few days now. I think it's going to continue probably, you know, put numbers around it.
Fifty eight hundred to six, you know, on the top side, fifty seven more realistically.
Fifty seven hundred, that is 5,800. But I don't, I think there's
like systemic things that are at play that are, that are problematic. And I just don't know,
you know, I don't know how we get that sanguine optimism for the year. So I think as you,
as you go into the summer and as you start getting higher and higher,
the impetus to sell is going to be greater. That's number one. Number two, I think there's
some real structural and fundamental step back happening as it pertains to the United States
being the head of the table with like a cooler head. I think a lot of, a lot of,
you know, a lot of our, a lot of our premium in the United States is built on just being like
that stability head of the table and, you know, calm diplomacy from a political side and then calm, just fundamental base on equity side.
And I think that some of the stuff that's happened in the last week, if it continues,
right, if you start to get some of this wishy-washy, can't map it out, one day you have one
thing, one day you have a next.
I mean, just look at Saturday and Sunday and Friday, right?
You get the, oh, tariffs are actually off the table.
There's actually concessions for some of these mega cap companies at the expense of small business, but chips, iPhones, et cetera.
And then go 30 hours later, you have individuals talking about how no actually it's not going to happen
and then hours after that there's actually a new tariff coming like the more that kind of stuff
persists uh it's my belief that it creates a instability in the united states for as terms
of investment grade at the same time while you you have international liquidity, where different places in the world are trying to pump liquidity into their systems, I think some of those dollars, for lack of a better term, are going to get repatriated domestically for the international side.
And I think that's like an actual problem for us, especially if we're alienating some of our allies at best and some of our trade partners
at worst, right? And so I think the further we go up, if we get a change in terms of how things
are presented from this administration, if we get some sort of clarity on that front,
I'm with you. Don't step in the way of a train. But if you keep getting
this back and forth, wishy-washy, and it's just, to me, it's just going to be a positioning
situation. So as long as that persists, I'm looking for idiosyncratic trades. I'm looking
for, again, barbell. The whole year I've been saying barbell strategy. I want to have safety
plays on one side with international, and on the other side, I want to have my momentum and then
some of these tech plays that I like.
So I think it's the same thing.
I think right now you had that washout.
We kind of reclaimed that uptrend.
We're going to try to make our way back to the 200 day.
I think there's a situation where we could actually reclaim the 200 day,
push a little bit higher and then get that next tape bomb.
So I just be really cautious on that front.
The last thing I'm, you know, just,
you try to make this stuff as generalized as possible.
So from a general perspective,
you know, any of these names that I am uncomfortable
holding for the next, like,
if I felt uncomfortable in the last two weeks
holding some of these names that I'm holding,
when I get to an opportunity to
lighten them up or unload them, that's how I'm going to take it. Now, imagine if I'm underwater
on some of these names and I didn't add or I wasn't that comfortable. I'm probably going to
try to flatten out completely. If you just apply that logic to some of these trades that you have
on the table or some of these names you have on table it kind of like gives you a broader
perspective in my opinion of how some of these bigger players might operate especially since
they're probably gonna have to hedge and rebalance the stuff as it gets higher so it's just you know
hate to be like the pessimist guy um but i i think that that's how i'm gonna view it and i think
nothing's changed materially from that front um you do have the benefit is you do have this, these names that have these idiosyncratic moves. So for example, you guys are talking about biotechs earlier. There was a headline last week on the back of like the FDA is going to start lowering standards for animal testing and they're going to use,
you know, AI, for example, for some of their medical grade stuff. Take a look at a stock like
SDGR on the back of that headline, health support, ripped 50% in like three days. So like the cool
part about what I'm saying, like this market is you're going to have opportunities where you get
setups like this and you'll get opportunities. Like let's say you don't want to go down that that end of the spectrum right it's on the on the quote-unquote
safer side of the spectrum take a look just take a look at stock like eli lily back to the 700
level that it's bounced off of the last like six times in the last three years gives you a really
solid base to trade from so as long as you have stocks that you're willing to play at levels that you find critical, you're going to have these setups to kind of like make money.
But as far as like really deploying real capital for like a sustained move, I think we're at the whims of an administration or a president that can waffle back and forth in the matter of like minutes.
So as we get closer to some of these unload levels,
I think that's what we're going to see.
Appreciate the thoughts there.
Good hearing from both sides.
StarTalk, I want to bring you into the conversation.
I know it's been a while,
and we've got Leo's bathroom session coming up here in about 26 minutes,
give or take.
What do you want to throw into
the news and into the world today?
We do have Leo's walk coming up
here pretty soon.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think a lot of our conversations
and this isn't a
knock on anyone. I think it's just the nature of
the environment. I think a lot
of our conversations from today and the past week
have been repetitive and sort of circular.
Look, I mean, you could cut a lot of the noise out here by just looking at a daily chart of the S&P 500, in my opinion.
And I really, frankly, don't think you need to make it more complicated than that.
You're going to hear a lot of stuff on these shows. You're going to see a lot of stuff on your Twitter feed where people are putting, in my view, a little bit too much effort into deciphering not only
the course for markets, but the course for policy. So I'll address this in two ways. I'll address
this first in the policy lens, and then I'll address it in the market lens. On the policy side,
lens and then I'll address it in the market lens. On the policy side,
and this is probably going to be, most people probably disagree with this. I actually think
we're getting closer to a point of clarity than we were three weeks ago. And I mean that not
because I think the policy has become predictable. I think the unpredictability of what's going to
happen next is still an overhead concern. But for those that have been paying attention, not to what Trump and
Lutnick and Bessent are saying, but rather to the official releases from the White House,
if you've used those as a guide, then I think you're starting to develop a pretty
decent understanding of what's going on here. I think the first example of that was this weekend
with this exemption, which was presented on Friday by both the White House
and multiple media organizations
as an exemption to semiconductors and chips.
But this is part of the lack of understanding
on the policy side has been people taking a headline, right?
So you see a headline on your social media feed and reading it and reacting to it
without exploring the nuance of the headline.
And that's what happened this weekend.
You know, everyone saw the headline on Saturday and everyone was like,
oh my God, like tech's going to rip.
And a lot of tech did rip today, by the way. I'm not, I'm not saying that didn't happen, but a lot of people were
like, oh my God, you know, this might be the bottom for the market. Trump's changed his
policy on tariffs. And then if you go look at the literal white house release, like on paper,
on the website from Friday, there was an exemption stated, but it wasn't a overall complete exemption of
semiconductors and electronics. It was just a reduction in those categories from the 145%
baseline China tariff to 20%. So that was an incremental positive for chips and tech. And you
saw those micro moves today on those individual names. So I think we're getting to the point now where you just have to defer to the official statements of the White House.
And as hard as this is, sort of ignore the commentary from Lutnick and Besant when they're giving interviews.
or the releases are going out haphazardly,
or there's a difference in opinion
that's sort of infecting the way
that these guys present the policies publicly.
I don't know. It could be any of those three things.
It could be all of those three things.
But the bottom line is,
I think that people should be paying less attention
to the remarks that are made publicly
by senior White House officials
and be paying much closer attention
to the actual releases that are written that are being put on the White House officials and be paying much closer attention to the actual releases
that are written that are being put on the White House website. So that'll be my first point. I
think there's been a lot of confusion in the front three or four weeks of this. And I think now we're
getting to the point where at least me personally, I'm beginning to just ignore the interviews,
ignore the, you know, five minute sound bites that they're giving on the White House lawn,
because I have not found those to be either tremendously consistent or to actually give you
a good guide on what the policy is. And what I have found to be much more consistent is just
the releases on the White House. So I would encourage people who are confused, and I have
been confused at points in the cycle as well, to just go to the White House, go to the trade releases.
And whenever something is announced by the White House or something is mentioned by Lutnik or
Bersent, just go check the White House website and make sure an actual official release is
complementing that statement. Because if it's not, then it's probably something that
either hasn't happened yet or is being spoken about from a policy theory standpoint as opposed
to actual policy. So that's my two cents when it comes to deciphering the policy and being
confused about what's going on here. The other side of the policy perspective is that going
into the year, I think I at least and a lot of other people believed that you're going into the year. I think I, at least, and a lot of other people
believed that tariffs were going to be used as leverage. At least that's the way I wanted them
to be used. And I think a lot of other people wanted them to be used that way. I think we're
kind of getting to the point where that narrative may be getting to expire. It seems that Trump is
pretty gung ho about keeping these in place. Again, I don't know how long,
that's anyone's guess, but it seems like he's pretty adamant on keeping these in place. It
does feel like this is a reorganization of the world order and that, you know, these countries
do need to change the way they're doing things. One thing that was insightful for me was there
was an interview, I forgot who this guy advised. I know he advised Mitt Romney. I know he advised a couple of other presidential candidates,
but he was on Jon Stewart's show this weekend. And he was doing an interview and pretty much
disagreeing with Jon Stewart the entire time, but they were going back and forth.
And he was arguing, look, I don't think this is a bluff. He was arguing that, look,
there's a good argument to be made that the new conservative party has sort of shaken off the
principle that the Republican Party of the 70s and 80s had, which is that we don't want interference
in competition. We want there to be a completely free market. We don't want American companies to receive subsidies or benefits or incentives any more
than we want international companies to receive them.
That belief has sort of graduated into a belief of, well, we do want that to happen if it
benefits American companies.
And we do want that to happen if it brings manufacturing back to America and brings,
you know, the middle class back to America. So that pivot is a pretty dramatic one. That pivot is one that entails a dramatically different approach, top down, for the government from an industry competitive standpoint, from a market standpoint. And that is probably, in my view, the biggest shift at play here, even more so than the
tariffs, even more so than the uncertainty, is this idea that the new Republican Party
may actually be in favor of bringing those things back in a real way and not just in a proverbial or like leverage
associated way and actually making a shift in American policy that brings manufacturing back
to this country. I still don't think it's realistic in a lot of categories. And obviously the nuance,
we can sit down and debate the nuance of that. I don't think it's realistic in many, many categories
to bring back manufacturing in this country, but they seem to think it is.
And, you know, that needle will be corrected along the path as more this policy plays out and people realize, oh, OK, you know what?
Maybe we can't bring back manufacturing of exhaust pipes into this country.
And you see a fallout in that or an exemption labeled for that industry or some sort of
incentives put in place.
But you'll see tweaks made to the policy along the way to suit industries as appropriate,
the same way that you did this weekend with chips and electronics, right?
Trump tweeted today as well.
He's working on exploring some relief for car manufacturers.
He was tweeting that today.
He's like, oh, I want to be nice to everyone.
And his phone's probably getting blown up by the US oems the car makers who will need exemptions in
order to operate under this environment they don't have any yet but they will need them
um and i would not be surprised if a few weeks from now who knows maybe even tomorrow we get
exemptions on on some of those automobile parts as well um because again ford and gm cannot survive
25 blanket tariffs so did
you see he actually made a comment on that today yes he did yes he tweeted about it today yeah um
so or truth about it whatever but my point here is that the the development of the detail
in this policy and the industry by industry specifics are not something that
any of us should be expecting now. I know some of us did. I personally expected more industry
specifics earlier on in this rollout. But it seems the White House is doing that on an improvised
basis. As they roll out these policies, they're getting calls from industry leaders, CEOs,
who are either advising them or straight up expressing fear of the outcomes
and are thereby being granted either exceptions or delays or incentives or whatever the case
may be.
And it's changing from industry to industry to provide that ability to operate.
So I think the policy, you know, from a 30,000 foot view probably looks
like a mess. I think if you take a more granular view, we're starting to get to the point where
at least myself, I'm finding more clarity on what the actual course of policy is and where we stand
today. So that's a good thing. I think incremental, incremental certainty around policy is a good
thing because it's still my view that the
uncertainty around the messaging, the uncertainty around the rollout has been a bigger problem for
markets than the tariffs themselves. And I think the economic impact of uncertainty in the medium
term on markets, on the broader economy and on consumer confidence, I think that impact outweighs
the immediate impact from tariffs as well. So I think that's a bigger confidence, I think that impact outweighs the immediate impact
from tariffs as well.
So I think that's a bigger problem.
I think the administration, hopefully, by now understands it's a bigger problem.
I think it's why we've seen, even though we have seen a ton of headlines in the last four
or five days, we've seen softer dialogue in the last four or five days, which I think
is a good thing as well.
So I'd say the situation on the policy side is improving incrementally we are getting a little bit more clarity but
it is still a bit of a mess on the market side look it's really hard in
this market to get multi-day follow-through on something that you're
looking for if you're a swing trader or if you're an investor it's really hard
in this market to call bottoms so for swing traders and investors this is a difficult operating
environment you have to accept that I think a lot of people talked about cash
positions I have a like I have a bigger cash position than I've had in the last
five years so it take that for what it's worth I'm not saying you should or
shouldn't be operating that way obviously on days like today or days
like we got lack early last week,
you're going to be glad to be net long. You know, I'm still net long technically,
even though I have a pretty sizable cash position. And so I think you can be in a position where
you're net long, not aggressively, not over levered. You have a handful of stocks you have
deep cost-based advantages on. You have some hedges in place.
And you sort of operate in as market-neutral an attitude as you can if you're a swing trader in this environment. And as conditions start to improve and the uptrend starts to rebuild, I think you can go back to being more aggressive, putting more cash on the table.
You know, if you are a leverage or margin trader, then going back to that modus operandi.
But markets have work to do still. You know, if you look at the decline over the last few weeks,
you look at this correction, and I'm just speaking to the S&P 500 here, the NASDAQ has
operated a little bit differently, but should give you a general idea. If you just look at the S&P 500
since this correction began, that 611, which was the highs.
When we pushed under the 9 and 21 EMA,
this is well before we gave up the 200-day.
We pushed below 9 and 21 EMA.
We have not been able to get back above them since the correction started.
And so I think that's a pretty good indicator for you
that these are acting as overhead resistance for the market.
There was an attempt late March to get above the 21 EMA.
We spent exactly one day above it.
The very next day we sold, sold again, sold below the 9 EMA, continued to sell.
Then we saw another bounce beginning of April from 546 to 567.
That bounce took us right into the 9 EMA, failed to recapture the 21 EMA, massive rejection
from there down to 480
which was the big sell we got.
And the recovery since then
we've been unable to recapture
declining 21 EMA on the daily.
So from my perspective
that is your acting
resistance in the market. Stock Talk, can I
ask you a question?
More so on like market fundamentals and things of that nature than the technicals, because
obviously the technicals have a lot of work to do.
You know, you're saying you're incrementally positive on the sense of clarity that's been
coming from the policy changes.
But at the same time, you know, is that truly going to outweigh the negative contributions from having more serious tariffs in place and on a
longer term basis than we expected. Because, I mean, I'm with you. I thought, you know, this
could have been a negotiation tactic or whatever. But clearly, he wants tariffs to be a real thing.
And it's going to take, you know, it seems like this narrative until we kind of come to a kind
of a place where, okay, this is what it's going to look like. It looks we kind of come to a kind of a place where okay this is what it's
going to look like it looks like it's going to take weeks if not months um and ultimately there's
going to be tariffs in place and so that's here to stay and that's going to negatively impact a
lot of earnings and all those things so what are your thoughts i'm really interested i'm really
interested to see some of these first tariff deals to see what the tariff rate is because right now
it feels like i'm starting to think is there just a base 10 tariff deals to see what the tariff rate is. Because right now it feels like I'm starting to think, is there just a base 10% tariff
rate in here?
Is the lowest five?
Is there any zeros coming up?
Yeah, base 10% is not a big deal.
The markets don't care about that.
Look, everyone's kind of focused on the chart that Trump pulled up on the second, right?
Everyone's thinking about that.
That's in the back of everyone's mind, especially institutional allocators. The thing about that chart,
those numbers are ridiculous. The global economy won't function with those numbers.
And that's true. Now, that's part of the reason why we got the 90-day delay. Trump says it wasn't
because of the bond market. That's a lie. It absolutely was because of the bond market.
And the bond market can force him to get softer on policy again. The bond market is like the most
powerful mechanism for policy in this country.
I can't think of anything else that would force a president's hand more meaningfully.
Certainly the equity markets didn't bother Trump.
And I think the timing of his delay was pretty exemplary because it was literally when the bond market started panicking.
So I don't believe Trump on that.
I do think the bond market forced him to panic.
And I do think it'll force him to panic again if we get there. But here's my view on
your question, logical. I don't think the tariffs matter overall. I think they matter with regard
to about five key trading partners. I think they matter with regard to the European Union, Japan,
South Korea, India, and China. That's all that matters, in my opinion. Vietnam,
maybe arguably, if you're like apparel heavy, you're super focused on that market,
you could throw Vietnam and Cambodia into the mix as maybe tier two, okay? But China, India,
the European Union, South Korea, and Japan, those deals need to be resolved. They need to be resolved quickly. Now, let's say a Japan and South Korea deal come in the next few weeks and it's a really good deal and the tariffs are really low.
Markets will respond very positively to that, in my opinion, because it'll be a indication that the upcoming deals are also going to be very soft on the overall tariff rate.
If that happens, that would be a sign to get even more incrementally positive on the market.
And I would start deploying a little bit more cash in that scenario.
Granted, one caveat I will put on this,
which I was touching on before you asked the question,
is I do need to see the technical structure improve to meaningfully deploy cash.
A lot of people, they see a green day in the market.
Like, okay, last week was a perfect example of this.
That massive 11% day we had on the NASDAQ, everyone and their mother was like, I got
to get long.
I got to chase this.
My view was not that on that move.
My view was this was a massive short covering move due to the result of the news getting
a little bit better.
But I did not feel good chasing that.
And I did not chase it.
And a lot of people who chased it got buried the next day when we were down 6% or 7% of
the lows on the NASDAQ.
And what I'll say is that this is the type of market where that's going to happen.
This is the type of market where really fickle traders are going to get destroyed.
Because if you see a sign of green, and trust me, that move was much more than a sign of green, right?
That was a historic day for the NASDAQ, one of the-time um intraday gains for the nasdaq
if that move um is going to draw you in i get it first of all i'm not going to knock people who got
drawn in by that but that's the difficulty with this type of market is you are going to get
massive headliner moves like we've gotten to the point now over the last three weeks where the average volatility on the major indexes is like 2% on a day-to-day basis. That's fucking crazy. Like that's trillions
and trillions of market capitalization being shuffled around like nothing. And I mean,
some people love that volatility. I don't really love it because I think extremely high volatility
like that actually disincentivizes investment in terms of people who are allocating real capital. So I'm not a big fan
of volatility at that level. I know day traders love it, but it's not really conducive to swing
trading or investing because, again, if you're allocating billions and billions of dollars and
the S&P 500 is going up or down 2% on a given day, that's not exactly a great operating environment.
So I'd like to see deals get signed.
I'd like to see what the overall tariff rate is on those deals.
That'll either make me incrementally more positive or incrementally more negative,
depending on what those numbers look like.
I would like to see an India deal get signed quickly.
I think if the goal of this entire policy is to de-shore from China,
which many people are starting to suggest that it is.
I think the fact that he put a delay on everyone except for China is also suggestive of that fact.
The fact that he's raised the tariffs on China since then is also suggestive of that fact.
So if the goal here really is to isolate, attack, and target China, then you do need an India deal
too, because that is your biggest point of deference for
Chinese production, right? India has the population to do it. India has the growing economy.
They have low wages. They are sort of the model backup, if you will, for China. And so I'd like
to see a deal get signed there. India's commentary so far has been very, very positive.
They said they're willing to issue a five-year plan where auto tariffs were reduced to 10%. That would be pretty meaningful change in policy for India.
But India has been a very protectionist economy for a long time.
So that'll be a harder deal to get done than it will with Japan or South Korea, in my opinion,
who are much more dependent on our economy.
India is a very independent sort of negotiating power on the world stage. They don't take sides. They don't
have allegiances. You know, they'll buy oil from Russia. They'll buy oil from us. They'll buy
stuff from the European Union. They don't care. And so that makes India a little bit more difficult
to negotiate with, in my opinion. So that deal, I think, will be drawn out. You know, we don't have as much
leverage to just slap on the table with India as we do with Japan. Japan and South Korea,
we can basically force into a deal. Like, they can't really do anything about it.
India, that's not the case. So anyway, I'd like to see deals with those five countries I mentioned
signed soon, sooner than later. And I would like to see the tariff absolute tariff rates be much much lower than they were on that board and that'll make them more positive.
Back to the technicals I'd like to see a retake of the 21 EMA it's been acting as overhead resistance for the last two weeks really for this entire correction which to me means it's the line in to you. You don't have to be a rocket scientist. You just pull up the charts, you look at the price, you look at the moving averages, and you look where they've been
respecting, where they've been rejecting. And it gives you a pretty good understanding of what to
look for in terms of reconstruction. So I'd like to see a retake of the daily 21 EME and the S&P 500.
And then following that, within the next week or two after that retake, I'd like to see a retake
of the 200-day.
In that scenario, I will be bullish again.
I will deploy meaningful capital.
That scenario could take four weeks to happen, could take a week to happen.
If we get a move like we got last week, it could happen in a day.
So, yeah, I don't know the time frame by which it's going to happen, but those are the two things I'm looking for.
I don't know the timeframe by which it's going to happen, but those are the two things I'm looking for.
Deals with the five countries I mentioned and a retake of the 21 daily EMA on the S&P 500,
followed by a retake of the 200-day.
If I get those, I'm bullish again, and I don't care about the rest of the noise in the background.
And that's going to be a difficult thing for a lot of you new traders
who are influenced by the noise in the background, who don't have experience in markets.
You're going to hear a lot of people talking on these spaces, on Twitter feed. And you're gonna be like, who do I believe?
When do I buy? When's the bottom? Come up with a very, very simple set of qualifying factors.
Like I just mentioned, they don't have to be the same qualifying factors as me.
You don't have to do what I'm doing. But I have a very specific set of technical and policy based
factors by which I'm going to
become bullish again. If those things don't change, then I'm not going to become bullish again.
And it's really that simple. And, um, you know, a lot of people last week when I tweeted out,
hey, if a China deal gets done, I'll chase the rally. I tweeted that out last weekend.
And then when we had the rally last week, people were like, oh, are you chasing here? And I was
like, did you read the tweet to the China feel to get done
no so no I'm not chasing I have a handful of long positions some of them
are working well in this environment some are not working so well today you
know heritage financial which is the only financial position I have was like
seven or eight percent today and Brayer was up four or five percent today Kratos
I think was flat, but it's been
green like five sessions in a row. So I have stocks that are working. I have a very, very
small basket right now. I'm running like eight positions. I normally run 15-ish positions.
So I'm running a much tighter basket. I have cost-based advantages on everything I own,
which I think is very important in this environment. I think a lot of people who are
struggling in this environment are people who are opening new positions in the middle of the
volatility. If you're opening a new long in the middle of this volatility, you open it on, let's
say, a day like today where the S&P 500 is up a percent and a half, your position's up three or
four percent, and then you walk into the end of the week and you get a minus four or five percent
day again on the NASDAQ, you're crushed, right?
Now you're deep right on the position.
Now you're sitting there asking yourself, well, do I cut the bag or is it going to rebound?
I mean, I bought it at the 200-day.
How much lower can it go, right?
I mean, check out some stocks.
Look how far they are below their 200-day moving averages.
There's a lot of stocks that are 20%, 30% below their 200-day moving averages.
So that's not really a floor.
And relative valuation isn't a floor either.
You know, I hear this a lot from people,
oh, the stock's so cheap, the stock's so cheap.
The market gets cheaper, your stock will get cheaper.
And another thing about cheap stocks
in a highly volatile environment like this,
keep in mind, in bull markets, we often say,
hey, stocks are cheap for a reason, right?
Bull markets, you look at like, you know, let's say you're looking at like a hot category
like software during a bull market, okay?
You look at the industry leader, let's say they're trading at 40 times.
You look at somebody else in the peer group and you're like, oh, they're trading at 21
times.
You know, why are they trading at half the industry leaders, multiple?
Then you go look at the detailers, you're like, okay, maybe they're growing a little
slower.
You look deeper into the sheet and you're like, oh, dude this huge problem they have this fucking debt issue they're looking to resolve over the last four quarters
ah i get it i get why they're trading cheaper than the rest of the pack that sort of analysis
that occurs in bull markets tends to not occur tends to not occur in bear markets. And the reason why is a little bit of just perception bias,
long bias maybe, but you do not see that type of analysis
in bear markets.
What you see in bear markets is, oh, the stock is cheap.
It's really cheap.
In fact, it's historically cheap.
I got to buy it, right?
And that is an erroneous line of thinking in bear markets.
And a lot of those people will find those stocks down 15% more, 20% more, 30% more, sometimes even in a single day.
So don't buy stocks under the 200-day moving average.
Again, this isn't advice.
This is just what I do.
I don't buy stocks under the 200-day moving average.
I don't buy stocks that are 10 sessions green in a row.
I don't buy stocks that are failing sessions green in a row. I don't buy stocks that are failing to move with
the market. I don't buy stocks that I think are cheap, but are really cheap for a reason.
All of these things are common fallacies that people commit during bear markets because there's
this suspension of logic and reasoning that happens when markets are down, where everyone adopts this buy the dip, buy one, this blood in the streets mentality.
I saw a great meme, a really good meme, actually.
I'm surprised I didn't repost it, but I saw a really great meme this weekend.
And somebody posted Warren Buffett.
I don't know, you know that Anakin meme where he's talking to Padme in the field?
I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about.
But they put Warren Buffett's face on Anakin's face.
And she was like, you told me to buy one.
There's blood in the streets.
And she's like, this is blood, right?
And Warren Buffett's just like sitting there.
But yeah, look, I think that's kind of funny and sort of a nod to the idea that people are operating
under these like gimmicky quotes
in market environments like this.
And I know I've been knocking this for like weeks,
but I think it's worth knocking again.
Like, you know, these monikers that people hold close
to their heart in markets environments like this
end up hurting people more than they help them.
So yeah, just operate carefully, own a handful of stocks
that you have owned and want to continue to own. Make sure you have cost-based advantages on those stocks.
Make sure you have some sort of hedging in place if the markets do want to barrel lower. Have a
mark in the sand like me with the 21-day and the 200-day where you're willing to get more aggressive.
Keep an eye on policy. Look for policy benchmarks, like I mentioned, deals with those five countries I mentioned.
And if you kind of keep a clear, you know, block out the noise attitude about this,
I think you'll feel a lot better about this market and be able to like, you know,
be less stressed out and get less gray hairs from this market.
get less gray hairs from this market.
Make no mistake, it's a hard market to trade.
Make no mistake, it's a hard market to trade.
I'm not implying that it's easy.
But I am saying there are things you can do
in terms of simplifying your outlook
that will help you a lot
and prevent you from getting very, very confused
when we get, you know, the next plus 3% day
and thinking, okay, that's got to be the market bottom
because the market was up plus 3% today.
That attitude will get you hurt in this type of environment.
But we are building slowly but surely.
We're above the 9 EMA on the daily now.
That's not really a sign that we can hang our hats on
because we have been above the 9 EMA during this rally
and just been rejected lower.
So I'd like to see a retake of the 21 EMA.
There's a lot of great quotes out there.
One of my favorites is that no matter who you are,
you're not smarter than the daily 9 and 21 EMA.
And I agree with that.
Time and time again, I've seen people try to buy dips
on a declining 9 and 21 EMA and get crushed.
I try not to do that.
There are times where I make mistakes as well,
but I try not to do that. So yeah, I think make mistakes as well, but I try not to do that.
So yeah, I think you continue to just keep your head up in this market, wait for the policy
volatility to resolve itself. I think one thing that separates this market from the markets that
people are comparing it to, you know, we talked about the last decade. You know, you look at
post.com, post global financial crisis, really 2000 through 2012, sort of lost 12 years, actually.
Yeah, that environment sucks to trade in.
If you were, you know, an investor or a long term swing trader, those 12 years sucked.
You know, from 66 to 78, those sucked too.
I wasn't there, but, you know, I've studied the 70s pretty extensively. And so I
understand what happened in the 70s pretty well. And you go back and look at the market, 66 through
78, you don't want to be there either. So could we be headed for another decade like that? Sure.
I think the big difference is though, between today and back then, is that we had fundamental
between today and back then is that we had fundamental problems in the economy in both
of those instances. You know, in the dot-com bubble and the global financial crisis, those
sort of happened back to back and comprise that lost 12 years. If you go back to the 70s,
we had stagflation, obviously, which is like the worst economic outcome. Now,
I don't want to say stagflation is impossible,
because it's not. But I was sort of a little bit positive by last week's inflation numbers.
Now, it's tricky, because you start entering this gray line territory with inflation numbers,
where you want to see them soft, but you don't want to see them too soft or else people are going to start worrying
about recession. So we're sort of teetering on that balance right now where I'd like to see
inflation data come in in line, maybe, you know, 10 basis points below, but I wouldn't like to see
it much softer than that because then we're going to have to start worrying about a recession.
And then you're going to start seeing that part of the market pick up
and that narrative pick up.
So we have to have a careful balance on inflation data for the rest of the year.
That's a little bit concerning.
But on the other side, you need to see growth hold up
because pretty much everyone's cut their growth forecast in the fallout of these tariffs.
I think some of the cuts have been a little too aggressive, frankly.
I don't think international trade is going to come to a halt as a result of this.
But I do think that trade between China and the United States is going to see a significant slowdown, which will lead to a slowdown in freight, which will probably lead to a drop in shipping costs,
which will also probably lead to a slight bump in prices for basic goods as well, maybe even
more than a slight bump in pricing for basic goods into the summer. But you could see a crushing in
enough other commodities and other categories where it offsets the inflationary impact of the
basic goods. That's what I would be hoping for if you're a bull. Because if we can get inflation to
be this soft into the summer and growth holds up, then you're going to scare away the stagflation
boogeyman. And you're going to have a market that can resolve higher into the end of the year.
So I wouldn't be in the camp that we definitely aren't going to make new all-time highs this
year.
I certainly think it's going to be tough to do, but there are enough relief catalysts
on the table that could happen, that could happen, you know, we're being could, that
would make that a possibility.
So those are what I have my eye on.
Like I said, you're going to, a lot of this conversation is going to end up being circular
and repetitive.
You know, I repeated myself there in that statement on a few things I have my eye on. Like I said, a lot of this conversation is going to end up being circular and repetitive.
I repeated myself there in that statement on a few things I've already mentioned before.
But that's kind of the nature of the beast here.
Until we get new information, we're going to have to sort of reiterate the points that we've been making. But one thing I will say is that we probably are going to get a lot of new information in the coming weeks.
This isn't going to be a stagnant thing where it's like, OK, everyone can move on from tariffs now.
Some people thought today was news failure.
I don't think so.
I saw that on my feed a lot today saying, oh, guys, today was news failure from tariff bad news.
We didn't go lower.
No, we got tariff good news this weekend.
This isn't news failure from a bad news event.
This is good news leading to an incremental bounce,
frankly, a pretty weak one in the market.
So no, this doesn't count as news failure.
News failure will happen when you get bad news.
So a situation that makes the current situation worse
and the markets don't respond to it.
That's news failure.
We're not there yet.
Markets are still responding to the
bad news when it comes to this policy. If tariffs go up again on China, which at this point at 145%
from the US end, 125% from the China end, you're effectively putting, I don't want to say an
embargo, but you're putting pretty close to an embargo on anything that's impacted by those
goods mutually. So I don't know what the end game is here.
Like they're both staring each other in the face,
waiting for one or the other to blink.
And that's sort of problematic.
You know, that remains.
If somebody were to ask me,
what's the biggest headwind to getting this all resolved?
It would be the fact that two 80-year-old men
with big egos are staring
each other in the face, you know, waiting for one or the other to cave on this. And that's a pretty
dangerous thing to stake the global economy on, right? Like, I mean, how many of you guys have
friends? Like, guys aren't exactly the most willing, dudes aren't exactly the most willing dudes aren't exactly the most willing to be the bigger guy and be like, yeah, you know what?
I'm sorry, dude. Like I'll take my tariffs down. It's all good. Like, I love you, too.
Like, do we really see that outcome happening? I don't know. It doesn't seem like a high probability to me.
So I think some other one one side or the other is going to have to pull a lever that is untenable.
So either China or us is going to have to pull an additional lever here
that is so consequential that it forces the other side to come to the table.
And I don't know who's going to do it first, but one of us are going to do it,
and that'll probably be where you start getting resolution.
But I don't see what that factor could be yet.
So, yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on everything.
There was a million headlines that just came out.
The one I do want to point on yet is Netflix.
They came out and it looks like in a meeting to their employees,
they gave some like internal targets. They want to become it looks like in a meeting to their employees, they gave some internal targets.
They want to become a trillion dollar company
by 2030.
They want to double their revenue
from I think it was 39 billion
is what this Wall Street Journal article is saying
up to 80 billion.
And something about their operating income
going from 10 billion up to $30 billion by 2030.
Netflix stock was initially moving higher on that one.
What other headlines were you seeing?
Well, I was actually, while I was listening, I was watching Scott Besson over there on Bloomberg.
And I'm sure you saw a lot of those headlines came out.
There was a bunch of them.
I won't hit every single one.
Evan, I don't know if a couple of them stuck out to you.
It was interesting.
He said he thought the VIX had peaked.
He said that they were going to start interviewing Fed candidates in the fall, among a bunch of other things, to be 100% honest.
He was all over the place that interview.
He kind of backtracked and said, like, oh was when you interviewed me outside the White House um
and I kind of made that comment I I mean I knew what was going on I know I said I didn't
but he kind of backtracked that so I don't know it was kind of a it was a wild time he he went on
a kind of a rant it was a stock talk version rant where he hit just about everything. He did make a comment about fall being the target date for a new Fed chair,
like starting to float new Fed chair.
And he said that he believes that VIX has spiked and it's peaked.
He also said that he doesn't believe people are selling treasuries, I think.
I don't know if I'm misquoting him.
That is correct, too.
Yeah, he said he didn't think anybody was selling the U.S. treasuries.
Like, that was kind of a weird comment.
Do you think the VIX has peaked?
peaked as in like as it hit the high for the year maybe well that's what best but it will
Peaked?
As in, like, has it hit the high for the year?
Maybe.
Well, that's what Besson said.
yeah it may have hit the high but the that's that doesn't like really speak to how it could work it
could it could have hit the high but still trade like let's say the 30s which would be you know
pretty pretty terrible for people who want to deploy like actual capital um that's great for
trading but it could be an elevated fix and we don't
get back to that level outside of an exogenous event sure
all right before we end i got prodded you guys anyone looking at this weeble one
i i know somebody like my uh robin hope says like a billion dollar market cap or whatever but it's
actually like 20 billion or something end of of the day, up 372%.
Stock talk.
You a big Weevil guy? You want any shares?
$29 billion. I actually did not
trade this one. I wish I did, but I did not trade
this one. It's almost larger than Robinhood.
It's almost what?
Larger than Robinhood.
They almost hit the same market cap today.
Really?
Yeah, it's currently at $29.000.
I mean, I saw the move today.
I didn't look at the market cap.
Let's see.
Do you think Chinese burgers?
I'm seeing 29.6.
I did.
I did buy the Webull IPO.
Makes two of us.
Went up like 200%, took out my initial cash, and now I'm just riding.
Nice, nice. I actually bought calls i'm
up 50 000 percent wow um yeah i'm seeing 29.6 billion but yeah i bought two yachts
is anyone seeing a different number what'd you say i'm seeing 29.6 billion uh yeah that's basically where it is i saw i see 28.9
so that's not close to robin it's 38 and it was it was higher at some points today yeah that's a
pretty big difference 10 billion dollars not when you were at like 100 million or something
yeah yeah yeah no it's a pal move but yeah from where it from where it debuted of course yeah
you still use weevil shares ip A little bit of shares, IPOs.
Sometimes IPOs go crazy like this.
Sometimes they dump 40%, 50%.
But yeah, this was a crazy one.
Do you think in five years Webull is operating in the U.S.?
Do you think Chinese-owned brokers are operating in the U.S. in the next year?
I mean, that's a pretty complicated question.
I mean, it just depends on the course of relations.
Again, if this administration is serious about weaning off China, then who knows?
But I also don't know how possible it is.
Like, look, I've been pretty much a China hawk for my whole life.
I'm not pro-China at all.
I think they have contrary interests.
What did G do to you as a kid?
What happened to one girl in Stockton?
I just don't like dictators.
That's a good answer.
And, you know, I think authoritarian cultures and countries
have something that is fundamentally misaligned
with the interests of the West and
the United States. Like, whatever you think about this country, whatever you think we've
good or bad we've done, we change the people that are in power of this country on a semi-regular
basis. That does not happen in Russia and China. And so from that perspective, I think that the
East is fundamentally misaligned with the values, both political and cultural, that make up the West.
And so, yes, I am a China hawk. I do think we need to put pressure on China.
I do think we can't be dependent on them. I do think a war with China and the United States will come eventually.
And so I think we have to be prepared for that.
And so, you know, do I agree in theory with the idea that we're distancing ourselves from China?
Yes.
Do I think we're doing it the right way?
So, you know, that's kind of my view on it.
But I do think we're going to get more distant over time.
I hope it's a slower process because pulling the Band-Aid off quickly when it comes to it comes to US and China relations will be catastrophic for the global economy.
There's no other way to paint it.
If we try to like rip these two economies apart in the next two or three years, as opposed to slowly and, you know, carefully unwinding these economic relationships, then you're going to create a lot of turmoil.
Millions and millions of people will lose their jobs.
Inflation for basic goods will go up.
It'll just be a shit show.
So this has to be done carefully.
It has to be done surgically.
It has to be done with a scalpel instead of a hatchet.
And that's my view on it.
Now, there's going to be other people that say,
well, it's been too long.
You know, he only has four years. He has to do it with a hatchet.
OK, if that's your if that's your point of view and you want to take the economic risk that that entails, then you're allowed to have that opinion.
But you also should be cognizant of the economic risk if you are in that camp.
You know, if you're in the camp of fuck it, you know, forget China, you know,
USA, USA, that's fine. But again, be cognizant of the economic risk. And so, yeah, I think we are
going to distance ourselves from each other. I think it is going to be a longer process, hopefully.
But as far as whether or not Chinese brokers are going to operate in the US, I don't know.
in the U.S. I don't know. That's a pretty complicated question.
That's a pretty complicated question.
I think we got a hard cutoff here. I think if I'm being for real, my first inclination,
which has been wrong recently, is Webull goes the Newsmax route and ends up, I said $15 on
a different space. Maybe it's $10, $20, $30 within a couple weeks.
We'll see.
At least for a little bit.
You never know what the long-term thing is, but yeah.
I don't think this is actually sustainable.
What do I know, though?
All right.
I appreciate everyone.
You should make sure you are following all of the speakers.
What a great way to end the spaces.
Some nice negativity from Evan.
But we really do appreciate all of you speakers. What a great way to end the spaces. Some nice negativity from Evan, but we really do appreciate
all of you guys for joining in.
And we do this every single Monday
through Thursday, 3 to 5 p.m. Eastern.
We have so much content going on now.
Well, I'm trading open every single day,
9 a.m. Eastern until 5 p.m. Eastern.
Then we also have stocks on spaces
every single Monday through Thursday,
3 to 5 p.m. Eastern.
At least we have another space going on from the Wolf account right after this.
So just a lot of great content going on.
If you're not already following Stock Talk up here,
I mean, if you're still up here after the last,
I really think I passed it over to you at 4.15.
So you've been listening for the last 45 minutes and 90% Stock Talk.
I imagine if you're still here you're a fan so
probably should be following him sarah logical and sam and the wolf accounts and everyone else
up here don't follow that gab blacksburg actually in fact if you are following that gab blacksburg
account go in and unfollow it uh but make sure you are following the host of the spaces
i appreciate everyone for joining in there's a be a space opening up on the Wolf account right now, right?
Yeah, right now. Stock fix for the week.
All right. Peace, everyone.
Appreciate you all.
Goodbye. Thank you.
