The Economy Is Not The Market

DANO WEIR: Six days until Christmas. It's December 19th, 2025. Is it five days? Does the 25th count as the day? I don't know. I always screw that up. My name is Dano Weir. I'm from Sonoma Wealth Advisors, the private wealth brand of Fermata Advisors. And you're about to go On The Markets this week. Say it with me now.

DANO WEIR: The market is not the economy. And what? The economy is not the market. They're not necessarily correlated. In fact, sometimes negatively correlated. Markets up 16% this year. Don't tell that to job cuts. Which states have been hit the worst?

DANO WEIR: Are those job cuts all AI or are some of them just COVID overspending finally hitting the fan? Stock market is definitely not in sync with the other market, real estate. Look at Americans owning stocks hitting an all-time high. And what pattern in oil might mean pump the brakes on those recession calls. We'll get that from Daren after this.

SPEAKER 2: The stock market, the economy, your money. What's the latest and what could be next? Find out now with Fermata On The Markets. Straightforward financial market updates for the brands of Fermata Advisors, Sonoma Wealth Advisors, Fermata 401k and Fermata Tax. On The Markets starts now.

DANO WEIR: Hey, let's bring them in here. They are the managing principals of Firmata Advisors, including Firmata 401K, Firmata Tax, our private wealth band, Cinema Wealth. Please welcome Daren Blonski, CFP, Chris Sipes, CFP. Welcome to the show, guys.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Hey, Dan. Good to be here. Good to be here. Happy Friday.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Here we are.

DANO WEIR: Daren, you dropped this in the chat. Should we just go here right away? I mean, Chris is at number two.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That was a bone for both of you.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Oh, man.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'll stick for you, Chris, and for you, Dan, because, I mean, if I could start the podcast off and make your day talking about football, why the heck not?

DANO WEIR: So we're looking at, for our listening audience, we are looking at a graphic that has the top 10 college athletic program valuations, which is crazy to even think about. Like, even 10 years ago, that seemed crazy. I thought those were educational institutions. Anyways. Chris, you're at number two. You're valued at $1.35 billion. Congratulations. You're Ohio State.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, I guess that's Ohio State. That symbol is awful. It's hard to tell. I'm actually surprised that Texas A&M is higher, or sorry, is the third. I would have thought some of the SEC teams would be higher there. And what about Notre Dame? I feel like that.

DANO WEIR: Would normally be higher too in terms of like gear and movies and everything else anyway interesting tech that's a whole that's a whole other episode we should do on it's all money sometime Daren there's wild stuff happening in college football in the financial space some of these programs are getting private equity involved colorado was trying to go to Saudi arabia to get Saudi money for their program utah just went in into debt in order to sign some of these players so very interesting so Let's start off with something fun to get into.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Hold on. Go back for a SEC. I just have a question. Who was it that Ohio State lost to again last week?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: They're actually not on this list. Oh, okay.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I was just kidding.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Thanks for bringing that up. Way to kick the show off on a great note, guys. I couldn't resist. Sorry, buddy.

DANO WEIR: Was it Illinois? It was Illinois, right, Chris?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Close. It was Indiana.

DANO WEIR: Indiana? Oh, sorry. Yes. Sorry.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yes.

DANO WEIR: Well, speaking of states, let's jump into it. Our first real slide, job cuts by U. S. States in 2025.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. So we got the unemployment numbers this week. So I thought it'd be nice to look at where most of these jobs are coming from, thanks to Visual Capitalist. And you can see, I guess, the darker red would show higher job cuts here. So of course our... Our home state of California there is pretty dark red, Georgia, New York, Texas, and Washington.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And this chart actually goes with our second visual, which is the U. S. Share of GDP. And so the more yellow in this one, the higher the share of GDP. So as you probably guessed. Most of the job losses are coming from the states with the highest share of GDP as well. That would make sense. So California is the highest at 14.5% of GDP. Texas is up there at 9.4% and then New York at 7.9%.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so we've all seen those numbers of certain parts of the Bay Area that account for more of GDP than 50%, 60% of the landmass of the United States because all the tech companies that are based there.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's just really wild when you see that and kind of visualize the concentration within the financial markets that we've been seeing. You know, the concentration of the GDP that we've been seeing in the reflected in the financial markets.

DANO WEIR: And the presumption here is that all these job cuts are all coming because of AI, or at least that's what a lot of the narrative is that companies are trying to say Salesforce as an example, when they made cuts a couple months ago, as they said, and it's because of AI. But you have to wonder if some of it was just COVID over hiring COVID overspending because of helicopter money that came in.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's kind of hard to tell where those job cuts are coming from. And, you know, are we just becoming an economy that needs, needs fewer people to do the things that we've done in the past? Right. I think I've shared with you guys, I've been reading that, that financial history book and it's really interesting to see, you know, all these technologies.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's a real riveter by the way. Yeah. Well, it's, it's been, it's been a. Total page turner for me.

DANO WEIR: Say the book again, Chris, in case people want to track it down.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I don't have the book right in front of me, but it's something like Investing in U. S.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's the History Of Financial Markets.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay. Okay. I think the title is Investing in U. S. Financial History. And it's a history of the United States from a financial perspective. And take things like the railroads. I forget the exact stat, but there was a huge...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Portion of people in the United States that were employed in agriculture prior to the railroads, once the railroads were established, that number dropped dramatically. And of course, people didn't just stop working. They started to do other things. And you wonder if AI is going to be the same and there's just going to be different types of jobs generated here, or if it really is going to be this.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: What I consider to be sort of a dystopian future of robots doing everything for us while we do nothing. A friend of mine sent me the Tesla robots running around and how the AI is going to be incorporated in these bots and they're basically going to be doing everything.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And another book that I'm reading right now is The Letters to the World.

DANO WEIR: Let me stop you. The book is Investing in U. S. Financial History, Understanding the Past to Forecast the Future by Mark Higgins, if anyone's looking for it. Go.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, yeah. So another book that I started was Letters from John D. Rockefeller to His Son. Great book. They're like five-minute chapters because each letter is just like a short letter. And one of the letters, he talks about the importance of work. Gaining value from working and doing good work and being someone that enjoys looking at work as something that is to be enjoyed because it brings meaning to our lives.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And this is a guy who was the richest person in the world at the time. And so I'm sure his kids didn't actually need to work. But it's interesting that even somebody in that position was talking to His Son and saying, look, like this is something you should do just to lead a more fulfilling life. And, so personally, I, I don't see how people are going to be, you know, full-time leisure and how that's going to go.

DANO WEIR: Well, they made a documentary. It's animated. It's called Wally. If you've ever seen it, it's a Disney movie. Don't worry about it, Daren.

DANO WEIR: That's a joke. It's a Pixar movie.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I want to pretend like I didn't hear that. Damn.

DANO WEIR: It is a dystopia.

DANO WEIR: Chris, what's going on with unemployment rate speaking of.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay. So the unemployment rate continues to tick a little bit higher. You can see it here on a longer term chart. We hit 4.6%, which is still historically low. The average is five. We got, we, we. I think in our most recent history, we were under 4% both prior to COVID, and then we came back down below 4% after COVID, and we're coming off of those kind of multi-generational lows.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I think prior to that, we hadn't been under 4% since the early 70s, late 60s, early 70s. And so we're coming off a very low base. Typically, as you can see with the shaded areas here, a rising unemployment rate tends to correlate with recessions.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And typically, when you get recessions, unemployment goes up fairly quickly. So we'll see if this time is different. But we're definitely in an uptrend on the unemployment side of things. So a little bit of, I know, it's sort of like that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That bad news is good news thing again, because this gives the Fed more cover. I think for the folks that say we want lower interest rates to stimulate the economy, well, the Fed has a dual mandate of full employment and price stability, aka not letting inflation get out of control or deflation for that matter.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And, Many people believe that the Fed will choose, if they have to choose between the two, they're going to choose employment and maximizing employment over controlling inflation. And so this increase in unemployment gives the Fed some cover to stimulate the lower interest rates based on that outlook.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Which is what the markets responded to this week and said, oh, this is good. Rising unemployment, that's a good thing. We also got some decent news on the consumer price index front. You can see the CPI year over year on, I believe this is like a three-year basis here, or sorry, 10-year. This is a 10-year basis. You can see that big spike that we got coming out of COVID for many reasons.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You know, we had no supply of goods. We had helicopter money landing in everyone's accounts. So not much supply, tons of demand, going to increase inflation dramatically. And then that inflation came down as the Fed raised interest rates and really pulled a lot of the liquidity out of the system. And then we've been kind of flatlining here most recently.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So there was a... A paper by the San Francisco Fed studying tariffs over a 150-year period. And the upshot was that they found tariffs tend to increase unemployment, which reduces the demand for goods, which lowers inflation. So this week, a microcosm of that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I think you could say, yes, we got a little bit more unemployment, and we also got lower inflation numbers. And so who knows if that is directly tied to the tariffs. I believe most things in economics come down to a confluence of many events, not just one thing. So that probably is one thing that's playing into these numbers.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But the CPI... Came in lower than expected. Now, we've got a little big Lebowski humor here for you, market zero. And that's because the biggest reason for the reduction in the CPI this time around was a zeroing out of owner's equivalent rent. So we've talked about this many times where housing, aka owner's equivalent rent is the biggest input to the CPI calculations at around 30%.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So about a third of the CPI measurement is something they call owner's equivalent rent, which is asking people basically how much could you rent your house out for? Well, given that we had a couple of months with no data, the BLS just decided to Mark that inflation at zero.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so having no information on the housing data, Now, I'm not saying this is a conspiracy because many people are saying, well, look, they didn't have the data. And so rather than put something else in, they just zeroed it out. So I'll choose to be optimistic about that and go along with that. However, that was a big driver of this measurement on CPI.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I also don't think it's a huge conspiracy based on the fact that we've talked about through Truflation and some other measurements from providers like WisdomTree have really shown that inflation has been lower than what's been reflected in the CPI. Mostly because the way they measure the housing inflation is very antiquated and slow to catch up. It was slow on the upside. A lot of these Truflation, Wisdom Tree, etc.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Were saying back in 21, hey, housing inflation is going up way faster than what the CPI is reading it at. And kind of nobody was listening at the time. Turned out to be the case. And then on the downside, it's also fallen faster than what the CPI is reading. So anyway, small nuance, but the housing numbers were the biggest driver of those CPI numbers coming in on the soft side.

DANO WEIR: So the headline that CPI is flat is perhaps, let's not say manipulated, but perhaps with an asterisk.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Perhaps. Now, CPI over the long term, this is from Bank Of America showing CPI going back to the 2000s. So I guess not that long. But we're back to that kind of long-term average of 2.6%. We're right in that same range. You see the big spike that we had coming out of COVID. And conversely, you see the big drop that we had in 2008, 2009.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And typically you'll see that in recessions where the inflation data drops. We're going to talk about oil a little bit later in the show, but that's the same thing. Demand for oil tends to drop when we hit recessions. So when the economy kind of hits the skids, that can be a deflationary event, which is also not good.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You don't want prices to drop faster than what... What is expected. So overall, it seems the Fed is kind of in that sweet spot with inflation. And if unemployment is trending up, those two factors should give them some room to make some adjustments if they need to.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This from Charlie Biello, given that we're coming into the end of the year and everybody's going to start forecasting what's going to happen next year. Where we want to look for the best places to park our money. And remember this time last year.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Wait, hold up. I think we need to give Chris an applause just because for like five years straight, he's been saying at some point the Eurozone is going to have the best year, better than any other market. Finally, Chris, you got it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yep.

DANO WEIR: I actually remember that. It was five Christmas parties ago, and Chris was sitting there just like, three ginger ales to the wind. And he was just like, you guys got to believe me. It's going to be bonds in EUROPE. One of these days. I remember Chris, you said that you pounded your fist on the table. Even we said, Whoa, man, are you riding your bike home?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. Well, it finally came true this year. It did. It did to remind you of the outlook this time last year.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It was safe to say that the outlook on foreign markets was very, very poor. And you see the top performer here, SOUTH KOREA, Peru, Greece. I don't think many people would have put those countries at the top of their list.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You can see the U. S. Is kind of in the middle, or sorry, towards the bottom in terms of the returns this year. It's been a good year for equities across the world. And a big part of this is the dollar, the strength of the dollar.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Dollar is strong, U. S. Assets tend to outperform. When the dollar is weak, they tend to underperform foreign assets. And so that's been a tailwind this year. So just keep in mind that Twain saying, it's not what we know that gets us into trouble, but what we know that just ain't so. And when it comes to investing, nobody knows the future.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We can't guess what's going to happen moving forward, no matter how strongly we feel about certain. Certain areas of opportunity. Okay, sentiment this week. Bullish sentiment still in the mid-40s. We got the CNA and fear and greed index at 44, which is just slightly into the fear zone.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's really pretty much closer to the neutral zone, I would say. And then we've got Bitcoin at extreme fear, which is very interesting given, again, an asset that last year at this time, Everybody was very bowled up on Bitcoin and it's had a disappointing year, I would say, in reflection of that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So maybe this year, hey, we're going into 26 with people, you know, having a pretty poor sentiment when it comes to Bitcoin. And so that is a contrarian indicator might be something to take notice of.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Another contrarian indicator is the equal weight. Versus cap weighted index. So when I say equal weight, it means that if you take an index like the S&P 500, and you are just taking your money and putting the same amount into each one of those companies, regardless of their size, when you do a cap weighted approach, cap weighted just means what's the market valuing that company at?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So, you know. NVIDIA is like $5 trillion. So they're going to get the biggest allocation within that index. So if you're a cap-weighted index, you're going to put the money in in proportion to what the market is valuing that company at. And I'll just read what Lawrence Hemtel says. He says, over the last about 100 years, equal weight has outperformed market weight. By about 0.2% per year.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: However, the last 10 years have been brutal with equal weight lagging by the largest amount on record, roughly 3.6% negative per year. And you can see this definitely at an extreme and could get worse, right? We might be sitting here five years from now and you say, I remember when Chris was five. Ginger rails to the wind and talking about equal weight versus cap weight.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And here we are, we've still got cap weight outperforming. That could definitely still happen. However, when you're looking for opportunities investing, a lot of times you want to consider areas that are somewhat left for dead, like foreign stocks last year, like Bitcoin this year. And like cap-weighted versus equal-weighted.

DANO WEIR: I'd like to point out that that story was fictitious. Chris would never actually drink ginger ale with that much sugar. No way.

DANO WEIR: That would not be on his canned sardines menu. This is true.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This is true.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay. Now, we talked about, or I guess the tile is the economy is not the market. The market's not the economy. But if we could put a little asterisk there, I would say that if there was ever a time in history where the market is somewhat essential to the economy, this is now.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We've had a bull market going on for a long time. I get weekly from client meetings, hey, why don't we just put everything in the S&P? And forget it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And people have a very comfortable feeling with stocks right now. There's a very high allocation to stocks. We talked about the K-shaped economy, how the top 10% or so are basically, they hold all the wealth, they hold all the income, they do 50% of the spending.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Most of the economy is driven by the people that hold assets. And Those assets are largely driven by the stock market. Therefore, the better the market continues to do, the more spending that segment of the population continues to do. So it's just like those states with the GDP.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Look, whatever is happening in California is going to have a lot bigger impact than what is happening in South Dakota, just based on the output of... Of that state from an economic standpoint. It's the same thing with that segment of the consumers, very driven by equities.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Was from Wells Fargo. They say neither the Fed nor the government can afford a bear market. Stock market wealth now surpasses housing wealth for the first time. So Americans historically have held most of their wealth in real estate, but not anymore. More people now have their wealth in the stock market and that's different than has happened in the past.

DANO WEIR: And I do think...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No, it's interesting. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say it's interesting. I was just doing a 401k enrollment meeting. And when you really think about the number of Americans now that are conditioned and taught just to plow money into their 401k regardless of price and just keep going and dollar cost averaging in the market, I think it's become a significant feature of the market, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And I think it's changed behavior in the market. And I think also it creates this flow into the market that's constant and helps keep prices up. Whereas historically, that just hasn't been the case, right?

DANO WEIR: I think right in line with that, Darren, ever since 2008, when they proved they could turn the money printers on at this level and go, oh, we can affect some outputs with these inputs. I don't know that any president is ever going to allow, not that the president, quote, controls the Fed, maybe. I don't know that any administration is going to ever allow. The market to go down ever.

DANO WEIR: It's what it feels like, frankly, because even this most recent, you know, NVIDIA and Palantir and the AI bubbles coming down, it was really like going for like, gosh, a whole week and then nope, boing, right back up. That's done. So it feels that's a little bit what it feels like. That's just a personal opinion. What I want to ask you, though, Chris, is that we've said in instances where things start to get really extreme.

DANO WEIR: And in instances where it seems like, hey, we're cruising, this is up and up and up, is when perhaps you should consider something else or when it's seeming like it's a foregone conclusion is maybe the time to consider something else. So based on this, which is saying that, hey, equities are at an all-time high and they're cruising, if someone wanted to be somewhere else, where would you be, real estate or somewhere else?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, I think diversification is usually the smartest approach to it. And I also want to go on the record to say, I think it's very dangerous to assume that the government can bail out the markets. I mean, when you add up the value of global asset markets, it's hundreds of trillions of dollars. So, I mean, I guess in theory, they could print infinite money to do something about the markets.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: The markets are so much bigger than the government that I think that's a false sense of security. I would not assume that that is the case. Sure, will they try different things to arrest the drops and will they try things to help? Of course they will. But I am not a believer that the government or the Fed or anybody else can fully control the markets.

DANO WEIR: I don't know that I was trying to give that impression. I'm sorry if I did. I guess I was just saying it seems like they have a lever that they didn't used to have and that they try to pull it and make it work that way. And we've talked about that at length.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. Now, the last couple here are from Bank Of America. And the first one is showing the fund manager survey cash level drops to a record low of 3.3%. So fund managers are pretty much all in in terms of the investment in the markets. And then we've got the Fund Manager Survey Investor Sentiment, which is the highest since July of 2021.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This obviously can shift very quickly. We saw that this year, obviously, with the new administration coming in, Animal Spirits unleashed. And then it dropped with the tariffs coming out. And now we're back now that that storyline is kind of faded. Look at the low in sentiment back when the Silicon Valley Bank run happened.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And also for those in the Northern California region, First Republic. Do you guys remember that time period when the bank runs were happening? Boy, that seemed kind of crazy. At the time looking back and now it's it seems like a just a decent distant memory, but anyway, sentiment's pretty high.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, it was, it was when that was happening for sure. It kind of, and it would seem like it was starting to kind of domino and, it was starting to get concerning again. But yeah, that's just like a, Oh, anyways, onto the next crisis. There's just, there's so many that roll on after it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That's right.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's just a giant game of whack-a-mole, I think. And I think that's where I think the government's kind of shifted. And I'd say like, yeah, it's maybe a little bit different is. I feel like they play whack-a-mole where there used to be this more like, just let the market be the market. Let the free markets do what free markets do.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think in a way that changed. And I agree with you, Chris. I don't know that at the end of the day that the Fed or the US government has the ability to completely fix the market in the moment. But I do think they have the ability to play whack-a-mole. And I think it'll work until it doesn't work.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I... It's hard to argue now, given what they've done, take 22 as an example, that they're not going to keep playing whack-a-mole, that they're not going to keep perpetuating the power that they do have, that any politician is going to say, well, it's better for the country as a whole for me to go down and just let this recession come because I think it's better for the country to reset than for me to get reelected.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Said no politician.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I mean, that would be like asking the politicians that run Congress to stop insider trading, right? Like they seem to can't make a law about that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I made a joke the other day. Did you guys catch that joke? And I thought about it. I'm like, you know, when I'm no longer a financial advisor, I'm just going to run for Congress on the platform so that I can trade like the politicians effectively. And just bring light to that topic because it's absolutely bananas.

DANO WEIR: Hot take.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah. Hot take.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Hot take. It's sort of comforting to read that history of the U. S., the financial history of the U. S., and realize that it's always been so. And it was actually probably a lot worse over various parts of our financial history. So that gives me a little bit of comfort.

DANO WEIR: All right. We move into the second portion of the show. So we are going to look at some charts, as Darren likes to call them. Others like to call them candlesticks and some hard numbers. Darren, what do you got?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, I think we'll just take a quick look at CPI today and come in. I think that's one of the biggest pieces of news for the week. I'm going to distill what I think the important charts are for the week. I would say that the fact that inflation came in lower, especially on the backs of all this. Worry that tariffs were going to create inflation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We're just not seeing it in the system, at least according to these reports that are coming through. And so inflation came in soft, jobs came in soft, unemployment claims are staying relatively flat. But I think that looks and bodes well for potentiality of lower rates moving on into the new year, which could help this market continue to keep on pushing further along.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Let's take a look at the S&P 500 for the week. This is the S&P 500. It's the largest 500 US-based stocks. Microsoft and NVIDIA clipping out nice weeks. So when you think about this, and my point earlier about how we have this wall of money that hits the market every few weeks when payroll happens, and every American that's been taught to contribute to their 401k and Max it out, we put a little bit into the markets.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: A sizable portion of America's dollar is going into NVIDIA. So it is an interesting thought when you think about it and you're like, well, wait a SEC. If a sizable portion of America's dollar with every paycheck is going into NVIDIA, it's continuing to blow the bubble bigger and continuing to make NVIDIA worth more relative to all the other stocks.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That is a feature like, and I was thinking about this today, Chris, back in the day when XOM was the big one on the street in the 50s. We didn't have the same 401k contributions like we have today. We didn't have that wall of money every two weeks going at it. And so one wonders if that makes it really hard to actually rebalance or recalculate all these.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I think that's interesting. Also, I was just noticing how much Eli Lilly is ripping up, pretty wild and they've got some crazy new weight loss drugs hitting the market. And Apparently the market sees it coming.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So, all right, let's go into, take a look at Bitcoin for those who do follow Bitcoin. I think we're actually still in okay land with Bitcoin. We're along this upwardly trend line. We're just kind of building up along here, which I think... Positive, I'm watching 93 for a breakout to go higher. We break below 85, I think we go lower on Bitcoin.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: When we look at the S&P 500, SPY, again, the largest US traded stocks, we've got this downtrend line that the market over the last few weeks has been tapping into. And we look like we're going to break out last week. And then this week we lost it for four of the trading days. And then we moved up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And closed right above that trend line. Kind of like that finish, actually. I think that finish is kind of positive. That looks to me like support stepped in right here around 669, 670 on the S&P 500, which corresponded with this high here and seems to be an important zone all through the last fall or this fall that we just went through.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I think generally that's a positive look on the S&P 500. When we look at the VIX, we got volatility selling down. Vix is a measurement of how complacent those who are trading the S&P 500 futures are. They say, hey, they're complacent right now going into the Santa Claus days here.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Take a look at dollar. We talked a lot about dollar and how the dollar has been going down last week. We talked about the impacts of the dollar on oil and how it was interesting that oil was going down while the dollar was going down. Usually, there's a negative correlation, meaning if dollar goes down, oil goes up, vice versa.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And oil... Continue to suffer down in the 56 range a glut oil again confirmation while why trump can get away and call for basically a blockade of Venezuelan oil ships coming out of there or at least the ones that are on the list but he has room to do stuff like that right now because oil is low and there's a glut of it but that also doesn't look good for long-term possibilities of recession, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We got weak jobs, we got oil down, and we've got this inflationary environment. It looks like it's going down. Again, it's all about how fast the markets move and the directions that they do move that counts.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: As long as we move slowly and constructively, then markets seem to adapt and be okay. If we move too quick in one direction, then you get things like in 2022 where banks can't pay back all this money because they can't. Fund money that's withdrawn because the value of the bonds they have to backstop their deposits are not worth what they were.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's why we lost Silicon Valley Bank, for example. So overall, I think stock market looks good. Oil markets are looking a little shaky. Ag, when we look at the bond markets, just kind of trending along, doing nothing. They've had a pretty solid year up, recovered quite a bit. This seems to be a big resistance area.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If we look back in 2020, this is where bonds were hanging out. We're back into that area now in 2025. It'd be interesting to see if we actually get some long-term gains on bonds because if you buy your bonds in 2021, guess what? You'll have the same amount of money in your bonds and a whole lot more inflation than you did.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If we look at gold, gold actually looks like it's going to break out. It's looking to me like we're going to get a nice little run up to 400. I would not be shocked next week to see us break 400 on the GLD chart, which would be, let's call it 4,400 an ounce. On oil. Silver continued to have a nice run as well with gold.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All in all, pretty constructive week for the market. I don't think, I mean, just not a lot to report. Inflation coming in under what they thought it was is, I think, the most newsworthy thing we had this week. So I'm going to wrap it there. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and you stay dry.

DANO WEIR: I got one more for you, Darren. You got one second. Can we look at one single stock?

DANO WEIR: So I thought about this because Chris has accurately pointed out, Chris says to me, he goes, you know, you're sending me a lot more posts from your feed than about the market. I think your phone knows that you work in finance now.

DANO WEIR: And I thought of this because what's going to happen to you if you're listening to this show is sometime in the next, between Christmas and New Year's, you're going to be at a function. And someone is going to start running their mouth about their stock pick, whatever it is. And I just wanted to show this chart. Because it just kind of made me laugh. Could you pull up Beyond Meat, Darren? B-y-n-d. Beyond Meat.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Beyond Meat, one of the like, it's been one of the meme stocks, right?

DANO WEIR: Yes, yes. And there's a number of these, what I'm, you know, COVID stocks that just like made all the sense in the world for a new generation. And if you pull back to Max, there should be back to like 21.

DANO WEIR: Like, wow. I just, I, as a, as a.

SPEAKER 6: That was kind of a jolly, like Santa Claus laugh you just had, Dan.

DANO WEIR: I, I'm, I just, there's just something about that look right there. I just look at the shape and where it is now, or it's just piddling down there, just towards the bottom. And, and who knows, you know, maybe, maybe the, who knows what the future holds, but just when you see, when you see somebody at a party and they start speaking.

DANO WEIR: And they start talking about whatever it is that they're talking about. And it's a, it's a pick or whatever it is. And you're like, man, I don't know. That kind of sounds interesting. Just look at something like this and tell yourself if you're, if you're cool being down there in the Peloton Zone.

DANO WEIR: I don't know if I'm the only one, I don't know if I'm the only one who, you know, thinks about things like that, but just as a, as a novice investor myself, I come, I come at it. I'm still learning a lot about the industry. Emotionally looking where that is right now. Are you cool with being down there if you had however much money in something like this?

SPEAKER 6: When people start talking to me at parties about these kinds of stocks, I just say, you know, let me grab another bite to eat. I'm going to go back to that.

SPEAKER 7: It is one of the hardest things to learn about investing that just because something is a good company doesn't mean it's a good investment and vice versa. And I think that's a key, or maybe it's a good idea, whatever.

SPEAKER 7: It doesn't necessarily translate to being a good investment. And so that's a really difficult thing for people to understand.

DANO WEIR: Just something to consider as we head out the door here. Thank you both very much for the show today. We always appreciate the insight. Thank you for listening. For checking us out, for finding us, for learning more, for following along. If you've made it this far in the show, might as well subscribe. That's how you help the show.

DANO WEIR: Subscribe wherever you're on, whether it's YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That way, you don't miss future episodes. We are Sonoma Wealth Advisors, the Fermata Advisors family of brands. If you want to learn more about our private wealth services, check out sonomowealth.com and we will see you next episode.

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