This week, our firm co-founders Chris Sipes CFP® and Daren Blonski CFP® look at:
• Why the states that voted Red in the 2024 election may have the most at stake in a trade war based on their exports to the countries on the tariff list.
• How the S&P and key investments performed in wake of the tariff announcements and pauses.
•The downstream impact of good news in the job market is perhaps not so good for Fed Rates and market returns.
• Daren with document proof direct from the Fed taking essentially full responsibility for inflation, high or low.
• This time last year, apparent experts called China "uninvestable", having lost $7 trillion in value since a 2021 peak. And yet...since September 2025 they've outperformed US stocks by 2x? Chris breaks it down.
• Why gold continues to prove "there's always a bull market somewhere".
• Daren calls it- he believes now, right now, is the bottom of the bond market. What that could mean for portfolios with bonds.
Audio also available on
Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-markets/id1802984526
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2YqyNLN7mcBApS5RL2piAj
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Daren:
[0:00] All right, we're live. It is Friday, February 14th, 2025. For those who celebrate such days, it is Valentine's Day. So I guess, yay. The markets, lots going on as always. There's never a dull moment out there. This week, really a lot to talk about with inflation. Inflation came in hotter than expected, and that impacted the markets a little bit. But I'm not convinced that the market actually believes that inflation is back, which is interesting. But there could be some, as we talked about earlier today, Chris, it looks like the current Treasury Secretary is really interested in some yield curve control. We can talk about that and how that might be impacting the overall rates. Which then could play into whether or not the market really thinks there's a return of inflation. But certainly the core CPI, CPI, and for those who don't know, that's Consumer Price Index, came in hotter than expected across the board, all due to eggs. Well, not really, but sort of.
Chris:
[1:17] I see what you did there.
Daren:
[1:20] We're going to talk about it right back and be right back after this.
Music:
[1:24] Music
Daren:
[2:00] All right. Well, let's go ahead and dive in to it and discuss this week. Should we talk about CPI first, Chris, or should we get to that after?
Chris:
[2:10] I think we're going to have plenty of time to get to that. I think what we're looking at here, so there's seven steps of maximum pressure, is the title of this chart, and this is from BCA Research, But a guy by the name of Marco Papic, who's like a macro strategist, seems to, so he's got this kind of template for the new Trump administration and what the strategy is. And BCA's research has adopted it. Now, getting a lot of clients reaching out, worried, feeling like, you know, things are different this time.
Chris:
[2:54] Hey, you know, I'm feeling very uneasy, that type of thing, which obviously is going to happen anywhere. You know statistically probably half our clients are are you know one political affiliation and the other half for the other you know if you look at this the country's breakdown um so this would be for for everybody but especially those that are feeling i guess extra stress this week uh or this last couple months here um anyway he shows this breakdown of like the steps and maybe trump Trump isn't consciously doing this step by step, but this seems to be kind of the pattern, of what happens. And so as hard as it might be for those that are very worried about these steps, I think it's instructive to kind of step back and say... Look, A is going to happen, then B is going to happen, and they're going to negotiate back and forth. And bottom line, I shouldn't be making any decisions until the full result has presented itself. Because I think whether he thinks about it or not, there probably is some method to the madness of these steps coming true. I don't know if you agree with that, Daren, if I'm way out there.
Daren:
[4:22] Well, I like to believe that there's a method to the madness. Let me just say that. I don't know, right? What I do know is that the pattern is to use very bombastic approaches negotiation, which then say things that seem outlandish. Um let's take greenland for example right there's this whole discussion about greenland and whether or not we should be buying greenland or not and blah blah blah and not to be political about it all but when you actually look at greenland and the northern seas are melting right so more ships are now going to be able to get through there greenland's a pretty important strategic um military position for the u.s navy and we we have a presence there already but i think under normal circumstances, someone might say, Hey, we really need to beef up our presence in Greenland and blah, blah, blah. But instead it becomes, you know, this very, we're going to buy it and it's going to be red, white, and blue Island. And, and some people really like that approach. Other people find that approach very offensive. And, um, I'm not here to judge one way or the other on that, but I think what I'm, I've been noticing at least from Trump's current privacy is that he tends to say things that are pretty outlandish, but then you actually dig under it and you can see where he's coming from a little bit better.
Daren:
[5:47] Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is a good example of that. Before the Biden administration left, they put in some law that you couldn't do any more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Well, they said, okay, we'll just rename it so we can do more oil drilling. But of course, it's made into a political theater instead of just that, rather than just navigating. So I think we all, the point being, and I don't want people to go down the political rabbit hole here, but we are getting lots of calls and people very fearful of things. But I think at the end of the day, we need to be careful not to attach our politics to our portfolios and, and know that things are bombastic as a mechanism to draw attention, eyeballs, um, you know, to, to garner certain groups of people to support. So, um, you know, it's really good to like have your portfolio in one, one room and then your political brain in another room and, and don't go in between those two rooms.
Chris:
[6:50] Yeah, well said. And, you know, if you look at what the market is saying, well, hey, you would think if you didn't know anything about the markets, what was happening, you'd be like, oh, after this new administration's changed, I'm sure that, you know, other countries are not doing well. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. When you look back to mid-November or so, one of the top performing markets in the world is the Chinese stock market, followed pretty closely by the developed markets, which includes Europe. And so the market is not worried in terms of how those stock markets are doing. So take that for what it's worth as well. You not only have to get the assumption correct about the way things are going to go, but you also have to get the result correct, which is very difficult for anybody that's ever bet parlays in sports. Right.
Chris:
[7:51] So one of the things that's been, you know, a key to the Biden regime was the stronger dollar. Stronger dollar tends to be a headwind for markets. That's more money, money flooding into the U.S.
Chris:
[8:08] And that creates it makes it difficult to export. It makes it difficult for us to have competitive exporting prices. And so that may be a reason why you're seeing the tariffs come on as well. But here you can see the different presidents, the regimes. Kind of like the market returns, it doesn't seem to have a rhyme or reason. It's not like the dollar strong under one party or the other or week under one of the parties. It tends to go through its own cycles, and the presidents just have to deal with it as it happens. So I think that as of right now, the administration would like to get the dollar lower.
Chris:
[8:53] In the meantime, though, the European stocks have been just taking off this year. So they've had their best start to the year since 2000. Now, that's 25 years. So definitely time has passed, right? And you can see all those other yellow bars of just S&P crushing Europe. And so for those of you that are just kind of looking around saying, hey, where might there be some opportunities? This is something I think to keep an eye on is, are we going to start to see that trend continue? And a strong dollar could help those foreign countries, especially if more business is going to be done between, say, China and Europe as a result of these trade wars.
Daren:
[9:45] Chris, I'm kind of a trend guy, if you haven't noticed over the last little bit.
Chris:
[9:49] And I've noticed what.
Daren:
[9:51] I don't see. There's a trend. What I see is episodes about. Yes.
Chris:
[9:57] Yes. But I don't see trends.
Chris:
[10:00] Oh yeah. Yeah.
Daren:
[10:02] Some interesting news this week and perhaps some peace head peace coming between Ukraine and Russia. I'm imagining it, you know, neither side is going to be very happy with what they have to do to get peace. But, you know, I think generally that could be a positive thing, right? You know, I do think that we are seeing the potential for more peace than we've seen in a while. And I think that's good for business, right? That's good for the stock markets, like it or hate it or whatever. You know, that seems to be the trend that the wars that are seem to be calming down on some level already.
Chris:
[10:44] Absolutely. Maybe that's what the market's saying too, right? But if you go back to the China export slide here, I think that this is also instructive around how effective is the trade war going to be when you look at, of course, this is as of 22, so these numbers are not exactly up to date. But as of 22, the exports to North America for China was only 16%. So imagine if you have issues with that from their perspective. It's not a huge leverage like it might be for some of these other countries. This number really surprised me, and I feel fairly up to date on this kind of information. I would have thought that Chinese exports to America were much higher as a percentage of their overall, but it's really not. So we'll see. There might be a different approach to China when it comes to tariffs. Yeah. So, wow, bearishness jumped. Maybe this is the reason for a lot of the calls. People are feeling pretty bearish. As a contrarian, this makes me feel good, actually, because typically when you see a lot of bearishness,
Chris:
[11:56] that's when the opportunities are rising. When everybody's bulled up and paying whatever price, that's not the greatest for forward-looking returns.
Chris:
[12:06] The percentage of sales for companies outside of the United States, and we talked about this last week, is that the MAG-7 are actually very exposed. The NASDAQ is very exposed to a trade war. So for those American exceptionalists out there that are like, hey, I don't hold any foreign stocks at all. I don't think there's a reason to diversify at all. Well, in a trade war, it's not necessarily true that there's going to be no impact on the stocks that have been really the only place to get any performance out of the U.S. Markets over the last however many years. The NASDAQ and the MAG-7 specifically have about half of their sales derived from outside the United States, which to me puts a big target on them from a sales standpoint, also puts a big target on them from a regulatory standpoint where these other countries feel like, hey, we got to retaliate against the US. The MAG-7 could be at risk more so than other areas of the market.
Daren:
[13:14] It's interesting, Vice President J.D. Vance was over in Europe this week, really kind of laying into Europe on free speech, which in some ways really impacted the MAG-7, right? So for some of the, you'll see when I get to some slides, but we had a pretty good week in the S&P and perhaps on some level, we're seeing that the pushback in Europe against some of the, I guess, censorship might be helping those Mag7 that export a lot into Europe as far as Google, Apple, those kind of things.
Chris:
[13:54] Yeah well if goldman sachs is correct if vanguard is correct uh if some of these big big houses that are projecting forward-looking returns are going to be correct the mag 7 is going to need a lot of help um moving forward so goldman sachs this is their chart um you know and they're sticking with their projection that the s&p is going to return around three percent annualized over the next 10 years. That was obviously a controversial forecast. But if you look at their model versus what was realized, of course, in 2000, there was some separation there during the dot-com bubble. But otherwise, it's been pretty close what their models are based on valuations to where they forecast future earnings. So you see on the bottom there, the worst case scenario is, negative is a 1%. And then on the high side, it could be as much as 7%. So there is some wiggle room there, but their baseline is 3%, which is probably much lower than what the average investor is expecting.
Daren:
[15:09] I think it's important to mark this point and to talk about this and be very clear about it because over the last few years, we've had these Meg 7s stocks push the markets and extend the markets in a concentrated, unhealthy way. I don't think anyone argues that at this point. And how the market unconcentrates is particularly important. But if what Goldman Sachs is saying here is correct, like you're effectively going to be having a, this, the mag seven would have to go down considerably for these projections to be true. And I think that's important. I think it's less likely that they just trade sideways. So the rest of the market could do really well. But again, another case for diversification, which at this point, if you're still diversified, you're probably frustrated because diversification has not worked over the past few years. What's worked is concentration, but concentration usually doesn't last, and it's usually a temporary state of the market.
Chris:
[16:19] So you sent me this chart from bloomberg uh which was great the inflation today which you can see we're kind of halfway that's that darker line that's halfway through here versus inflation in the 70s and um uh you know this sort of reminds me of the covid chart i'm getting ptsd of the the two waves. Remember the two waves in the COVID chart?
Chris:
[16:44] And this is similar. In the 70s, we also had two different waves. We got the bad CPI report earlier in the week, as you mentioned. Rates shot up. Markets struggled with that. And then today, we got awful retail sales for January, way worse than expected. And so the market kind of digested that over the last couple of days with lower rates. And so it's sort of like a manic moment here where we're just kind of all over the board. But inflation is one of those things where they're constantly trying to control it because inflation leads to all kinds of social problems. It leads to market problems. Um, it's, it's, you know, awful basically. So obviously no politician, uh, or person in general should want to see more inflation. So hopefully this chart does not play out, but I think it's, um, interesting to kind of take a look and see, uh, we're possibly in line with what happened in the seventies. It's too early to tell.
Daren:
[17:57] I think the market doesn't believe that inflation is going to go back up, and I'll show why on some charts in a minute. But as we've said many, many, many, many, many, many times on this show, inflation is really experienced very differently depending on what type of consumer you are. And I think that's important to point out, right? So that's what makes the whole idea of inflation particularly pernicious and difficult to deal with, is that it's hard to impact all parts of the economy equally to keep inflation down and to keep it measured. And the only way to do that is by big macro events. And that's why I would lean
Daren:
[18:40] towards we're probably closer to a recession than further away. And for other reasons too, but that's one area. And I think the market might be saying that to us. If we get higher inflation, though, and in recession, then we get deflation, or then we get stagflation, which is really not a good place to be.
Chris:
[19:02] No, no. And so this is from Andrea Steno Larson, and he says, if our friends over at Truflation are on to something, bond yields have certainly peaked here, which would be a huge signal. So uh you know that's what you mentioned last week in the uh on the markets you think i was.
Daren:
[19:20] Gonna say chris i will gladly take my victory lap on the bond market
Chris:
[19:24] Uh i'm sure as you said like the diversified investors would be very very happy to hear that bonds uh that yields have peaked and that bonds have bottomed uh that would be very welcome news after the worst bond market in history, which you can see on the next chart from Charlie Bielo showing just how bad this one has been. The Bloomberg, as measured by the Bloomberg Ag, which is kind of like the S&P 500 of the bond market. And here it shows the longest drawdowns going back to 1976. But you could even, I think, stretch this out even further. I think he was just using kind of modern day markets post Bretton Woods and going off the gold standard, you can see not only was the maximum drawdown much more than any normal bond market drawdown in history, but we've also been in that drawdown. We're still in it now, which means a drop from the height to the bottom. That length of time at 54 months is just completely off the charts compared to anything else that we've experienced and so.
Chris:
[20:41] If that was the bottom in the bond market, I think that would be a very welcome news for diversified investors and borrowers, too, because that'll play through to things like mortgage rates if interest rates end up coming down. I think it's instructive because the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has mentioned that they are targeting 10-year yields as a measurement of success, which I don't remember the last administration that has ever mentioned that. And so if it's true that the administration is targeting that as success over and above a high stock market, that's something we should all probably pay attention to and it could inform investing moving forward.
Chris:
[21:32] Uh so interest rates on the back of that high cpi report um this is from mike zaccardi and he said look you know that basically just priced out um the the uh change in rates this year so uh the market's constantly trying to gauge what's inflation going to be um how much of a premium Do we need to bake into bond premiums or bond interest in order to make those investments worthwhile? And that rate affects all markets. And so the fact that we got that high inflation rate is going to put the Fed in a box, basically, and make it difficult for them to continue to lower rates, which you can see on the next chart, which is the two-year treasury. Yield, the market's assumption of what short-term rates should be versus the target Fed funds. And you can see we're very close. We're basically right on it. Not a lot of room for the Fed to cut based on that and the market's expectations. Yes, they're maybe a tiny bit tight, but not room to lower rates.
Chris:
[22:51] Um, you know, I thought this one was interesting. I would not have guessed this. This is showing the federal employees. Um, and, uh, this is from, um, Peter Breson at BCA research. And he says, federal employment hasn't grown in 50 years to balance the budget. You either need to raise taxes or cut spending on entitlement programs and the military, which will it be? And Peter Breslin was a former chief global strategist and director of research, or he is the global strategist director of research at BCA now. He was formerly with Goldman Sachs and the IMF. And so they do a lot of studies, obviously, on countries' balance sheets and such. And so, you know, as Doge continues to do its work and everything, yes, there's maybe a little bit of the headline grabbers are there. Um, but as Peter says, there's no way we're going to really turn the dial on the debt problem without, uh, making some painful cuts elsewhere. Um, you know, in, in other areas, which is the part where the rubber hits the road and nobody really wants to cut their particular program.
Daren:
[24:05] Well, and call, call me a, um, uh, uh, I guess what would be the right phrase, a doubter in disbelief, but one of the challenges we have with our political system, because there's lots of great things, but there's also challenges, it doesn't induce long-term thinking, right? And dealing with this debt problem we have is going to require painful cuts and next to no politician can withstand. A president nowadays has 16 months to make any real changes before they'll likely get voted out if things get too ugly. So it makes it very, very difficult to solve this problem based upon how our politicians work in election cycles.
Daren:
[24:50] Um, so I'm not very hopeful that that's going to get solved. And so we shall see what unfolds. Um, so let's take a look at CPI. So this is looking at all the key categories, um, for CPI that's consumer price index. These, these are the categories that the U S Bureau of labor statistics measures when it comes to inflation. So why does inflation matter? Because if you think about inflation, it's a, it's a hidden tax, right? So it's a tax on our pocketbooks. my $100 is worth less than it was last year at this time. If that's going down by 2% per year, that's one thing. If it's going down by 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10% per year, that's more problematic and that creates issues. That bodes well for stocks in the short run, not so good for assets like bonds. What's interesting, and I'll show this in the charts in a minute, bonds actually did pretty well this week considering that CPI came in hot. That's why I'm saying that I don't think the market's buying, the CPI is really going to stay hot and that we're more likely to see some deflation or maybe not deflation, but less inflation.
Daren:
[25:59] We shall see to be determined. When we look at these different categories, not a lot stands out to me other than the fuel oil, we're getting some negative numbers. So these would be deflationary numbers and energy commodities, fuel oil, gasoline. And I think this is so critical, Chris, because intuitive sense would say, Hey, Republican president comes in. Trump is generally pro gas. I should go invest all my money in gas. Think again, right? Cause now, right now we have proof in the pudding. Now it's early yet, mind you, but proof in the pudding that we're actually seeing energy come down. And when energy comes down, um, that doesn't bode as well for the energy companies. Um, we actually saw that last in the 2016 in president Trump's presidency as well. So, um, It's not always a foolproof strategy to look at what that politician's policies are and then speculate, oh, this person's really pro-war, this person's pro-energy, this person's pro-green, whatever, and actually invest that way because you don't necessarily know what the downstream effects are of that policy. And that's what makes it a particularly difficult task.
Daren:
[27:07] We are seeing some vehicle depreciation here. Interesting though, look at motor vehicle insurance, maintenance, transportation services, really just that's really the where we're seeing a lot of um inflation and and when you look at services services less energy services so the services world is still fairly hot um and again rent i mean the rent market is just tight and uh probably will be for the foreseeable future because we have a shortage in homes.
Daren:
[27:41] All right, so let's take a look at the S&P 500 to start off the week. So what you're looking at here is what's called a heat map. A heat map represents the S&P, which is the 200 largest US-based stocks. And the bigger squares represent bigger capitalized companies. And those bigger capitalized companies have more pull on the market. We were talking about this earlier with the mag seven nvidia microsoft apple amazon google meta tesla um those are your your magnificent seven stocks and those are the ones that because they've taken more oxygen out of the market when they go down that will impact the market more significantly this is one day performance let's take a look at the week performance so when we look at one week performance um you're seeing pretty green across the screen even though we came out with strong inflation numbers
Daren:
[28:35] So that's interesting to take note of and to pay attention to the fact that the MAG-7 are still ripping pretty well is interesting. Let's look at the charts and see if we can discern a little bit more about that. So this is the chart of the S&P 500. And you can see these are daily candlesticks. So this represents one day in the market. So first thing I'm going to point out, we were on a downtrend. We got a breakout. See this on Thursday, we broke out and then we stayed above this downward trend line. That's bullish on its face. You can't argue that's bullish any other way. What we want to see though, to see if it has any staying power is this movement up and this test, right? Now the test doesn't always come right away. You can see in this move here, it came and tested right here, took a little bit. So it could take a week or two to test or more that area as support. So we're going to be looking at the 600, 605, 610 on the SPY for support to make sure we're going higher. But right now on its face, we're going higher. Interesting though, we didn't close at an all time high, just short of it, but we did break out. That looks good for next week. I like that setup going into next week for the stock market. If we look at the RSP, which is equally weighted index, we didn't break out. So you have a divergence between the two. What's different? RSP represents the index with an equal weight, meaning all those boxes are the same size. And we did not see a breakout there.
Daren:
[30:03] And so because you have that divergent, you have to raise one eyelid and go, hmm, will this breakout really last or is it going to go down? Or is the mag seven going to keep going higher? Take a look at Apple though. You got a nice breakout in Apple, pretty significant.
Daren:
[30:19] Well, yeah. So in a double bottom forming here. So this could be really interesting for Apple. watch this. You got your double bottom. Your neckline is going to be right in this neighborhood. And so next week, be watching for 250. If we can break 250 on Apple, I think we go higher on a new all-time highs on Apple. That looks pretty positive. That's a pretty strong thrust up the last four days coming on the back of the earnings reports.
Daren:
[30:48] Earnings are coming in fairly strong and the market's responding well to it. I'm looking at Microsoft, one of the other Mag7s, really the weak spot just we're sideways here we're in the downtrend we're in the support zone um it's on life support at this point if we lose this below um you don't have support down till 376 so microsoft looking weak so we'll stack that on the side of bearish not bullish we look at nvidia on the champion of this market and just really a lot of just it hit its 100 days simple moving average found support at 117 and has been moving up looks strong it's above all it's important moving averages on its face. That's bullish. Um, I like that it's taking on this high here from, um, previous, um, 2024, July timeframe. But we still got to work back above this long-term upward trend line for me to feel confident. But on its face, NVIDIA is bullish. So you got Apple bullish, you got NVIDIA bullish, you got Microsoft bearish.
Daren:
[31:48] So that gives you kind of a sense of what we're looking at. I want to talk about gold though, because gold is a big asset, right? There's a ton of money in it. And it had a pretty strong sell-off today, which is not surprising. But I will say from a chart perspective, it's right along that 9 EMA, which is a trading average. I'm not concerned about it. Gold has had an incredible run. It's done very well. It continues to do well. And it just sold off today and landed right on the averages. I still like gold as a potential option. Let's take a look at oil. Oil, we've been talking about these breakouts in oil. And we saw this breakout we were talking about for a very long time. It broke out, got rejected, came back in, and has continued to stay a long trend. It looks to me that the geopolitical system wants to keep oil right around 70 bucks a barrel. That's what you see right here. And until we get some kind of extraneous circumstances, you probably won't see that move too much. Although I would say this downward trend here is happening and it's getting more and more tight, looking for a bigger kind of mid-middle timeframe breakout, breakdown. Look at transportations. This is a Dow Jones trans—oh, not DJT. We don't want to see that.
Daren:
[32:59] Where's let's go over here um Let's go right here, DJT. Dow Jones Transportation, which is a leading index for the stock market. If you think about it, this is looking at the arteries. So how are the arteries doing pumping blood around the system and the economy? And you got a breakout here. You got this downward trend line. We broke out above. That looks pretty bullish on its face.
Daren:
[33:23] I don't see any other way to see it than generally the market's looking fairly bullish right now. IWM, this is going to be so tied to that dollar strength that Chris was talking about earlier. We need a weaker dollar really to see IWM take off and do well because it's just really important for those smaller companies that export around the world. With Trump's tariff threats heating up. Interesting, with all the jibber-jabber talk and yappity-yap about tariffs, you're not seeing much movement in the Russell, which tells me that at least the Russell thinks that all this tariff talks is a nothing burger
Daren:
[34:03] And should be fairly ignored, at least in his first announcement. Let's look at the 10-year, right? So we're looking at the 10-year for the bond market. Here's where we can take a victory lap. So you got the bond market, you got the 10-year on a down cycle. We got a pop-up this last week and last Thursday, Friday, and came down. So that big bar right here, this big candlestick was Wednesday's CPI report. And the market said, we don't think so. Just kidding. We're not that concerned about inflation. If the market was really concerned about inflation, we'd probably see the 10-year going up and we're not. Now there is the possibility because Bessett, who's the treasury secretary, has talked a lot about something called yield curve control, which in there really want to push this 10-year rate down because it's pretty important. Mortgage rates, et cetera, are all set off this. Trump is a builder. He likes to build. He's been building his whole life. I guarantee you watches this 10-year very, very, very closely because it pulls through the rest of the economy.
Daren:
[34:56] All right, look at the egg and here's the victory lap. We talked last week about this being the bottom for the bond market and that this was looking pretty bullish. And sure enough, we finally got a breakout today right there. So you can see that downward trend line and this downward trend line has been in place since September when they started decreasing rates and now bonds are back at it. So this is good news for you if you're a diversified investor and you'll actually
Daren:
[35:26] start seeing other parts of your portfolio improve, not just your stocks. So we aren't really seeing it pull through in the 10-year, 20-year treasury, excuse me, and TLT. Yeah, this is the index, the ETF that tracks the ice shares 20-year treasury bond. And we're still not breaking up where I'm saying, yeah, I like that. I'm comfortable. In the short term, it looks a little bullish, but I want to see this 100-period moving average get broken first. Take a poke at Bitcoin here for a sec. Um... Nothing really interesting there, I would say. We're just kind of in what I call spaghetti soup with the moving averages. There's no real trend at the moment except sideways.
Daren:
[36:05] It doesn't appear to be going anywhere. So nothing to report on the Bitcoin side. Just for Chris, we'll take a look at emerging markets. And wow, take your victory lap, Chris. You got to break out.
Daren:
[36:19] Interesting with all the negative media. I mean, just like all the negative media about China. And I think there's plenty to be negative about. when it comes to China. But with all the negative energy going towards China and their economy and whatnot, the stimulus that they're doing is certainly having an impact. You can see this downward trend line that's broke now and it's moving up. So that looks pretty bullish for emerging markets. Again, for those people who are diversified investors, it looks better for you, right? Because if you're just sitting in the S&P 500 and only in US-based stocks, which is not emerging markets, well, you might want to think about diversification.
Daren:
[36:56] All right. Developed world also looking good. So Europe, right? And we're seeing this remnants of peace, but look at this double bottom happening. Cha-ching, cha-ching right here. And we got our neckline break and we're moving up. And that looks really positive, I would say, for developed markets.
Daren:
[37:13] The market might be whispering, we're actually going to get peace between Ukraine and Russia. Um i like to believe that the markets are better at any other instrument in the world including the human brain because it's a collective human brain of bringing all these data points syncing them together and then launching them uh and giving us a read on the market so my wrap for the week is this i think we're fairly bullish i think we've got breakouts on important magnificent sevens we've got good looking charts on the bond markets for once we've got good looking charts on developed markets, emerging markets. I think regardless of your politics, you got to just turn off the garbage in the media. And if you're an investor, break apart your investments and your politics because they don't care about each other. With all that said, we'll leave it there for the week. We'll be back next week to wrap up the markets and see what happens. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody, and be well.
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