Oil And Stocks Don't Mix

DANO WEIR: Thank you for finding On The Markets from Sonoma Wealth Advisors, the Fermata Advisors family of brands. My name is Daniel Weir. I'm the marketing director. This is our weekly market update. We'll be joined shortly by our managing principals to talk about the only thing there is to talk about this week in the market truly, oil. It's all about oil this week.

DANO WEIR: Of course, there's other things going on, but it is all about oil this week. Oil and stocks don't mix. To assets which typically have been negatively correlated. We definitely saw it on display this week. Is this just a brief incident, or is this an oil shock like we haven't seen since the 1970s? We're going to look at why farming statistics from the 1870s could give you some reassurance about AI replacing all jobs.

DANO WEIR: You're going to see a stag or a male deer there on our picture if you're watching the live stream. That is because so-called stagflation is also looming. What are the prediction markets saying about the potential for rate cuts at all this year? And as you'd expect, major spikes in gas prices, some of the sharpest in 20 years. We'll take a look at that trend On The Markets.

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DANO WEIR: Chris Sipes, Managing Principal. Daren Blonski, Managing Principal. Guys, let's jump right into it. Chris, tell me why. Farm statistics from the 1870s are going to make me feel good about AI replacing me someday.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, Dan, I put this in for you and for me and for those out there that might be feeling a little wobbly about the prospects of AI and technology on our futures to give us some hope. And let me just read this background. This was from a guy named Philip Carlson, SESLAC.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Hopefully I said that correctly, in the late 19th century, nearly half of all Americans worked on a farm and spent more than 40% of their disposable income on food. Now, roughly 1% of Americans working on farms and food budgets have fallen to roughly 12% of income.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So technology has always had a big impact on us. And just because certain jobs disappear or are reduced, doesn't mean that we won't find new jobs, which is what you see in the chart on the right, which is non-farm payrolls.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You can see it continued to really chug upwards to the right. And that's because we found other things to do to improve our lives that is not farming, even though, you know, most farming is done by tractors and, you know, technology now. And so it's not as labor intensive as it once was.

DANO WEIR: Okay, I'm going to trust you.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: What about investor sentiment?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So we've got investor sentiment indicators this week, and boy, people are feeling pretty down in the dumps, which if you follow this show, you know that that's possibly a good thing for expected returns moving forward. You want to think of it like... If everybody's gung-ho about something and rushing in to buy something, it's likely you're paying a higher price for it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And if you're paying a higher price for it, it's likely that your returns are going to be lower. Versus when everybody doesn't feel good about something and they're kind of running the opposite direction, typically you can get a better price on something which is better probabilities for your future returns. So we've got bearishness ticking up to 46.4 this last week. On the AAII investor sentiment.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We've got the CNN fear and greed index all the way down at 21 extreme fear, and that's down from 25 extreme fear one week ago. And then Bitcoin at 15, down from 18 extreme fear last week. And that's even though, I don't know, guys, are we starting to see signs of life in the Bitcoin market? I think we peaked over 72 briefly today. So maybe there's some signs of life there.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Why you got to steal my thunder like that, Chris?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No, we got some good news, right? And I will say that as we usually say on this show. You know, Bitcoin is on the front end of the risk curve. What's that mean? It tends to go down first. And then we see the other assets sort of follow. We saw Bitcoin go down quite a bit while ago, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So it started really tanking, let's say, well, it hit its high back in January. And it's been pretty much downhill and then flat since February. But we're starting to see some signs of a bottom in formation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That could be the sign that While everybody thinks this might get a lot worse with Iran, the stock market might be getting ready to find a bottom from its current correction. I think it's a little too premature to call that, but certainly the front end of that risk curve is starting to tick up and it usually Bitcoin moves before the rest of the market.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay. So I'm sure everybody's getting their fill of doom and gloom when it comes to gasoline prices. So let's just get that right out of the way. This week, this chart is from Jim Bianco at Bianco Research. I'll just read what he says. The chart below shows the national average retail gas price from AAA Motor Club survey.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yesterday was day 11 since the war started on February 28th. The middle panel shows the 11-day dollar rise. The current 61-cent rise was exceeded only at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War in March of 2022. And the bottom panel shows the 11-day percentage rise.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Gas is up 20.6%, which is the largest 11-day percentage increase in the 22-year history of this measure. So definitely seeing some movement on gas prices. Now, why is that important?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Because energy prices go through to inflation measurements inflation measurements affect what the Fed can do and i'll tell you guys one thing i would not want to be Kevin Warsh right now i don't know about you yeah he's stepping into quite the jam Chris is not a war it's a combat operation right it's a strategic strike yeah I think I saw the excursion was the name of it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But this is from Jeff Weniger, and I think it's important to keep the rise in gas prices in perspective. So he has this great chart showing the number of hours that the average person has to work to buy gasoline to drive 10,000 miles, which is kind of the average mileage that most people drive.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And you take incomes today and the... Average miles per gallon today versus what that would have looked like historically. And actually prices, even if they go up significantly, are still going to be lower than they were, say, in 2007, which was the last time we kind of had sort of an energy crisis when oil went over $100 a barrel and a lot of people think was at least a big contributor to the great financial crisis.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Some good news there, the way you measure these things, it's relative, and you have to keep that in perspective to use the same kind of relative metrics over time.

DANO WEIR: And they're saying that this changes because of the efficiency of fuel economy, is that it?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, yes. It's fuel economy, but it's also incomes, so people's incomes are much higher. Than they were in 2007, for example. So fuel economy is higher on vehicles, but really the price of gas has been pretty consistent, you know, relatively over that period of time.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So like, I guess the bottom line is like $3, $4 a gallon, which I think is where it is for most people today, versus California. I know it's in the high fives, but... It's roughly what it's been for about 20 years in terms of the actual cost per gallon, even though incomes have gone up and even though miles per gallon in the average car has gone up.

DANO WEIR: That is a good point.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now, trying to predict the markets is a fool's errand, and we've shown that over and over again. And I think it's instructive to remind people of that right now when they're feeling gloomy and they're thinking like, what should I invest in?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Nice. I should go for the safe bets, quote unquote. I should get real defensive. I should try to pick the winner. Be really careful of that. And here's lesson number...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: One million on that from ben carlson at ritholtz he's showing the returns on the energy sector versus the tech sector since the Covid lows now remember sitting in our our basements during the lows of Covid using technology like we had never used it before people were just starting to talk about AI and all the revolution that we're we're seeing in the technology sector.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And remember that when oil went actually negative during COVID, you guys remember when that happened? The price of oil went negative.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And we were talking about the fact that oil as a percentage of the S&P 500 was down to only like 3%. It was the lowest that it had ever been, the energy sector as a portion of the S&P 500. Well, had you...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Kind of looked past all that doom and gloom and bought the energy sector, you would have done better than had you invested in tech, which everybody knows was a winner over that period of time. So you just never know. And that's why it argues for diversification.

DANO WEIR: And Chris, it's funny you say that because I, in the description of this week's show, I referenced, and you and I have talked about this a little bit too, there's a lot of 90s nostalgia going on right now among you not us younger people like physical cd sales are actually up bookstores are actually growing and i find it really funny and counterintuitive that in 2025 the thing and the resource that we're having another war about is not data centers and it's not rare earth and it's not you know some some mineral we just discovered no it's still just oil Like, it's just throw it, let's throw it all the way back to the nineties.

DANO WEIR: And it's still just oil. We're just still just having another war about oil. Like as much as things change, they stay the same.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, I think it's important to mention too, that the thing with oil is it's not, you know, we think about oil and the gasoline, I'm going to show you some charts of the fuel prices across the United States here in a minute, but it's everything, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Like oil is what moves the entire economy, right? So if we're fighting about the life.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Flood of the economy which is oil that creates gasoline which is i mean look around in any group you're sitting in at this moment there is byproducts of oil everywhere it is the number one byproduct or or i mean natural resource that has many many byproducts of it so it has it carries through the entire economy right and that's not going to change it Thanks.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Probably never going to change, right? As much as we'd like to think we wouldn't be oil dependent. Too much of what we live in.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Use day to day is oil based.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That's right. Also, a large percentage of our fertilizer comes from that region, as well as helium, other inputs to industrial uses. And I'll tell you what, the interest rate market is sniffing this out quickly. What we're looking at here is the two-year yield versus the Fed funds rate.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We've talked about this many times where the Fed is really, they kind of got to follow what the market does because the Fed has control over a certain part of the rates market, but a very small portion. The vast majority of interest rates are set by the market, the supply and demand by investors. And investors in fixed income...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: One of their chief worries is one getting their money back. But they don't worry about that as much when they're lending to the U S government. But the second worry that they have is inflation. You know, they, they've got a, they're, they're expecting to get a return, over time and they don't want to lose purchasing power.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so they've got to factor in an inflation, into, into their assumptions. Now, the two-year is widely considered like a leader of what the Fed is going to do. And if that's the case, again, I feel really bad for Kevin Warsh because that two-year ticked up above the Fed funds rate for the first time this week.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It doesn't show it here on this particular chart, but we've seen the two-year breach that Fed funds rate on the upside, which is important because... That's the market saying, you know, rates need to go up and not down. And just yesterday, President Trump, or maybe it was today, I think it was yesterday, he had he sent out a truth about, you know.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Powell needs to immediately lower the rates, which I'll read something from Jim Bianco in a second on that. But this is the market saying interest rates are going higher, not lower, largely driven by inflation, largely driven by the cost of oil, energy, fertilizer, etc., etc.

DANO WEIR: So then what are the potential for rate cuts is the next question.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. And here we turn to Kalshi, the betting markets, and look what just overtook the leaderboard here this week. Up from the doldrums is zero cuts. So right now, the market is expecting no cuts. There's a 25% chance that we get one cut and a 21% chance that we get two.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's interesting that they don't have a hike on here, but I've actually seen some people mentioning the chances of a hike, which wouldn't that be out of left field?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Literally zero people thought that that was going to be the case to start the year, let alone a year ago. But there's the potential if interest rates continue to go up that we get no cuts, and there's also the potential we actually get a hike. From the Fed to try to keep this under control.

DANO WEIR: I got to commend Chris, by the way, because Chris had a Wi-Fi issue at his house, and he has found an alternate location to do the show. He's a warrior, and he's hanging out right now, talking the markets, and we appreciate you, Chris.

DANO WEIR: So if you heard a car in the background, that's because Chris is bootstrapping it today. Darren. You're commended, hazard pay. Darren, I wonder just in this moment, could you explain stagflation again as we talk about rate cuts and oil and how that all plays into one another?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, and stagflation is a way to like sum up the trap that the Fed's in right now. Because stagflation, it's a, when you look at, you've got high inflation, you've got weak growth, high unemployment, you have stagflation. So if we look at where we're at right now, we don't have high inflation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But with oil going up, that puts some significant risk that inflation is going to rear its ugly head. Makes it difficult for the Fed to lower rates because if inflation is going up in the lower rates, you just put steroids into inflation. As rates go up and rates stay up, oil goes up. That creates weak growth, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If we're all driving our car less because we don't want to spend the money or it costs more to order your... Goods off Amazon Prime or whatever you buy it from or to get those goods to the store you like to shop at. Price of food goes up. That creates weak growth, right? We have less dollars in our pocket to invest in other things. That slows the whole economy down.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Unemployment is already an issue. It's especially an issue with new college grads. We're seeing the AI world already start to replace a lot of entry-level jobs. So I think unemployment's a bigger story than even Things are leading on right now. So if you've got high unemployment, you've got weak growth, and you've got high inflation, you have stagflation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And stagflation puts the Fed in a particularly difficult spot. So as much as Trump might want rates to be lower, it's going to be really difficult to lower rates with higher oil, slowing the economy, and also dealing with what's happening with AI and unemployment, which, again, I think is very understated in today's news.

DANO WEIR: And to be considered when it comes to inflation is that if you look at the inflation number now at the moment, you know, not extremely high. But if you look at the run since COVID, it's that it's that collective run where it's like, yeah, OK, it might not be at the moment, but look how far we've come.

DANO WEIR: My double double is literally doubled. So, you know, the people are still still reeling from that that inflation and wages haven't really caught up.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, so we got the PCE, the personal consumption expenditures today, which was in line with what was expected. However, you can clearly see in the chart here that it is on the upswing. To be precise, from Nick Timoros at the Wall Street Journal, it says core prices rose 0.36% in January. In the PCE index, November and December price levels were revised up slightly. Raising the 12-month inflation rate to 3.1%.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This index had fallen to 2.6% in April of 2025. Headline was 0.28% in January and 2.8% over the year. So this is largely considered one of the main indicators that the Fed looks at for potentially following through to inflation measures via... Cpi. And so this is something the Fed keeps a close eye on, and it's not great that we're seeing an uptick and a possible trend change here to the upside.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay, and where is that coming from? This is also from Nick Timuros at the Wall Street Journal. And you can see that good news, we're getting a lot of price slowing on the housing side of things. So housing being about a third of the inflation measurement is a big impact on CPI. And that has been slowing, has continued to slow really since 2022.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So thankfully that is continuing lower. Then you've got the core goods, which is heading the opposite direction. And so really all the increases that you're seeing on the PCE indicator are actually coming from core goods instead of housing. Services are pretty much sideways. And so those are the impacts kind of under the hood to PCE is most of that is coming from core goods.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay. And the last thing where this might matter is you're probably starting to see a lot of things in the private credit market that JP Morgan this week came out with an indication that they would have to slow the amount of redemptions coming out of their private credit funds. This after big issuers like Blue Owl and I'm trying to blank in on the name of the other one that was in the news this week. I think it was Clearwater.

DANO WEIR: Blackstone?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Blackstone was another one, but there's another one that's like a $30 billion fund. I think it was Clearwater. And limiting the amount of redemptions that they can have. Well, all of these private credit funds, just like any other loan, they have to refinance.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And if interest rates are going higher because the market is setting interest rates higher because the inflation is expected to be higher, then those lenders won't accept lower rates. And if the borrower has to pay higher rates, that has a direct impact on whether or not they're able to afford those loans.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so it's creating a lot of stress in the private credit market. And who is a lender to a lot of those private credit markets? Well, it's the big banks with Wells Fargo being the largest here.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And you're seeing that weakness reflected in the stock prices of those companies here year to date. The financial sector is down a little over 10%. So having an impact across the board, those higher rates are kind of... Playing through the market as we speak.

DANO WEIR: Can you detail that for me just a little bit more, Chris? You're saying the private credit market, so let's just say Blackstone. I'm not saying I necessarily know this, but let's just say Blackstone. They're giving loans to businesses, but then they themselves are borrowing it from a Wells Fargo in the first place?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Partially, yes. They are giving loans to businesses. They have investors that are investors in those funds. And they also may have partners in their various investments and also getting lending from big banks as well.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now, some that I really respect, namely Bob Elliott at Unlimited Funds, has said that this is not an issue to be concerned about, that even if the entire private credit sector is subject to about a 25% hit. According to Bob, that will not have a very sizable impact relative to the stock market.

DANO WEIR: All right. We are moving to the second portion of the show. The show is Oil and Stocks Don't Mix. Let's get Darren on the horn here and take a look at some of the charts to see exactly what did happen in the oil markets this week.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All right, so I'm going to go to oil here in a minute, but first I'm going to start with just some more sophisticated indicators, perhaps, and we usually show on this when we do this market wrap for the week. But I think these are two indicators that are important for us helping to identify where there might be a bottom to the selling we're seeing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Okay, so let's first talk about what this whole part of the chart is. These green and red candlesticks represent. Price and they represent the week in the market. So each one of these little candlesticks here represents... Five days, the market's open, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So this week, we saw price move up and almost bounced, and then it got rejected, and we closed out pretty bearish for the week. So we'll put that on the side of, we're more bearish than we are bullish at the moment. And you can see we closed below this 20-period moving average, this red line here. We've now had two weekly closes below that 20-period moving average.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That. Tends to create more selling in the cta world so we're likely to see more volatility kick in with the close today at one o'clock where we closed right down about 662 on the sp or the spy this is the index that trades the S&P 500 if we're looking at spx which is the s and the true S&P 500 on the spy is the index you can actually trade then you see we closed at 6600 32.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Why do we use the S&P 500? Because it's the largest 500 US-based stocks. Here's another good way to look at it. You can see though, what's interesting on this chart, first thing I notice is that these big companies that are holding up the market, they're the ones that sold off.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Everything else looks pretty green actually. We've definitely got weakness in financials, which is not a good leading indicator for the economy. But these guys are so big and they're such a big part of the S&P 500 index that unless we keep blowing this bubble with our magnificent 7, it's going to be really tough to keep this market going and going up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So you can see NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, all looking in the red this week. So with that, you get selling, you get a candlestick that prints. Kind of like a shooting star look, which is a bearish candle.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: What the wick means is that price during the week moved up to there, but the open is where you see kind of the thick body of the candle. And then when it closes, it turns red because it closed below where it opened this week.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So we almost had a breath of fresh air, and then it just looks like things are going to get worse before they get better with oil. Why is oil so important? I've said earlier in the show, it's integrating to everything in the economy. Now, let's talk about two other indicators I put on the screen today.

DANO WEIR: Can I ask you one question real quick? Could we see the equally weighted S&P this week? How did that do?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Let's look at the equally weighted S&P, and we had a red print on the weekly too. So that's not good. And the gigacolumn is below the 20-period moving average. A little bit of good news on this chart, though. I guess I'll explain this. This is what the... Right here, this is an indicator that is the visible range volume profile.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So what this is effectively telling us is that what price point was there a lot of buying and selling going on? So areas that were heavily fought over with buyers and sellers in the past tend to be support and resistance in the future.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So if this chart's trading down into this area, we know that in the past there were a lot of buying and selling going on in this area. That's an indication that maybe if we see selling next week. Then we come down into that area, we could get a lot of buyers stepping in in this area. So I say that's on the good news because we've got some nice support, at least on the RSP.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: When we go back to the SPY though, and we look at that, we're not seeing the support until 600. So because of that heavy weighting that's in the S&P 500, there's really not a lot of volume here, which tells us there's probably not a lot of support. So we could see things trade down really quickly.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Quickly in the 600 range which would make sense right because if we saw the chart trade up and i talk about a lot of times where this becomes a test of support support holds and then we move higher that's a very very common move after a breakout you can see we broke out of this area and we have not come back in yet so on the one hand everyone be like oh in the world everything's gonna ball us we're gonna bomb them blah blah blah we can go on to the old negative death spiral talk but the chart couldn't just be correcting right it broke out it's going to test support and then it can resume higher i'm in that camp right now would make perfect sense then we go down to this area in the chart which is called the relative strength index this is an indicator that tells us how relatively the market's being bought or sold and we're kind of in mid-range and when it's when we get over 70 on the upside then it's overbought and we get below 30 on the bottom I'm sorry.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So. Sold. We're in the mid range right now. So I can make the case that we go down further, we see 600 is support and that holds. That's kind of my base case scenario with the S&P 500. I think we've got some more selling yet ahead of us. I think there's more to resolve with the oil crisis going on.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: When we look at oil, you can see it's on the relative strength index. It's very overbought at this point, right? Like this is just a really crazy moment. If you look back, really have not seen too much of a history other than if we go back to the 1976 oil crisis was the last time we saw something like this. It's been a lot of years. So hard to say what's going to happen.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: There's really not candlesticks in recent history to compare to what we're seeing. Why? What are we fighting over? Well, we all know we're fighting over Iran, but more in particular, we're fighting over this little area of geography called the Strait Of Hormuz, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And what's happening is there are ships that need to get through this area and they need to fill up with all our Qatar and you. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, that's where all the oil comes through and then the ships go out and go into the global system. If they can't get through here because Iran, which is right here, is threatening to bomb and basically sink all these oil ships, there's a problem.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Now, Saudi Arabia has built a pipeline and it moves about 5 million barrels a day. So right now, you have a lot of ships working their way back around. To where the pipeline comes in over here. So it is creating some flow. Iran is also letting the Indian ships get through and the Chinese ships get through at this point.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: At least that's the rumors of it. But you can see a good example of these ships. They're just all locked down right here. They should all be moving through this strait. So until this really gets solved, we're going to have problems. Before we came on today, there were some notifications that...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: 5,000 Marines were being dispatched to the Middle East. And it takes about two weeks, I guess, for them to get there. But there's a lot of thinking right now that we'll actually put boots on the ground to protect this area so that we can get ships through. Because at the end of the day, if we can't control the gas prices, we've got problems.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So previous weeks, I've talked about that's going to bar. Let me just reload this thing. Flight Tracker. So Flight Tracker is just a website that shows you air traffic. And you can see that I've been pointing this site out for a few weeks now and really looking at this to try to discern whether or not we're going to see a war go off.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And as you can see, this whole area, there's no commercial flights over this area for a very good reason. And they don't want to run into a drone or a missile in the process. So that's what's going on with oil. That's what's driving oil. That's why we've got challenges with oil right now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And because oil is such an important part of the economy, if oil goes up, guess what? Stocks go down. And that's what we're seeing right now. So all eyes on oil. If you want to know what's happening, watch what's going on with oil. It looked like earlier in the week it was actually going to settle down if we look at it on a four-hour chart.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You can see it look like, oh, maybe things would settle down in the Middle East and not so much. It seems to be going back in the wrong direction at this point. Chris did mention earlier, and we'll bring up Bitcoin on some good news side of things. And you can see there's a lot of trading going on right here at this lower section of the chart, telling us that there might be a bottom getting put in in Bitcoin at the moment.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Why is that good news? Because Bitcoin tends to be the front end of the risk curve. In the front end of the wrist curve, it goes down first and it goes up first. And so from that standpoint, we could argue that things might be getting a little bit better.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I feel like someone wants to say something, Chris.

DANO WEIR: No, I can't.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, no comment.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No comment. Okay. So.

DANO WEIR: Unless you're looking for comments on Bitcoin hitting a bottom. Are you fishing for them?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm just giving adequate room for the contrarian perspective here.

DANO WEIR: Well, let me just say this. I mean, you've given your technical analysis, but Darren, also, this is something you've spoken at length about. You know a lot about Bitcoin. So beyond just the technicals, how do you feel about Bitcoin? Does it feel like a bottom to you?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Does it feel like a bottom to you? Yeah, I mean, I try not to go with my feelings too much on this stuff because feelings are often wrong when it comes to the markets. But you can see it's making lower low or higher lows.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You can see here it broke up, got rejected, came back in, made a lower or a higher low, came back up, it got rejected.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yesterday, I guess that would be. And then we came back in, but we didn't go back down the other way in a big way. Above our 20 on the four-hour. Let's look on the daily. We've got greens above our 20-period moving average right here. That's all really positive. That looks like a breakout.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so I don't really care how I feel. I just care what's the charts say because feelings are bogus when it comes to markets.

DANO WEIR: But but what I guess maybe feeling is the wrong word, but I'm saying like the narrative right now. I mean, you've got so many other coins, XRP, ETH, they're just for the year, like down 25 percent, right? They're getting smoked. So is there a world where those continue to be crushed and Bitcoin actually works its way out? Or do you feel like crypto kind of moves as an industry?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, there's seasons, right? We have a thing called alt season in the crypto world, Bitcoin. Because it has a larger network effect than the other crypto coins, tends to trade a little bit differently. It's got more substantiation to it.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I would say, generally speaking, as you can see, right over here, we have Bitcoin go up, and so does ETH, and so does XRP, and then here's Doge.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, the more prominent coins, and they're up. So, you know, they're working.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Together and you can see back looking on a weekly chart we've had one two three four five six weeks down and we had one two and we're up one two three four five six roughly so it's you know i want to see this hold and i want to see this break up here we're going to have resistance right here so i think next week we might test 77 000 on Bitcoin If we break above that, then I would say the front end of the risk curve is indicating to us that we'll probably see a quick dip here on the S&P 500 and then things will take off again.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But you can see how Bitcoin led this drawdown. Now it's buying a bottom first. S&P is finally rolling over. You could argue that they're not related and that's just circumstantial. Well, perhaps. I've just... Noticed a correlation that Bitcoin and other cryptos tend to go down first when we have a risk-off sentiment and the rest of the market follows.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Let's take a look at gold. Gold's now printed two weeks down. So I think at this point we can say it's topping. There's going to be a ton of support right here at 5,000 an ounce. So I think we want to definitely watch that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: For support next week but the fact that closed really close to 5 000 and you bounce off that number or that price point tells you they'll probably be some more selling to come for gold and we'll probably go probabilities around we go below 5 000 on gold which is kind of interesting now when there's more risk in the world that gold now is going down but remember a few i guess months ago we were saying gold up hold up gold up What's going to happen?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And then we blow up.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Exactly. That's what I was just going to say. It leads, right? And all those weeks that we were like, why is gold just keep going up? Why does it keep going up? These things, these things lead, which is another reason why you can't guess it ahead of time, because by the time you're reading it in the headlines, it's too late. The assets have already made the move. When everybody knows it's already been priced in.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, it is interesting because we were for weeks saying, this doesn't make any sense. Like, why is it ripping so high? You know, and that's the risk, right? That we often have with clients where they're like, put all my money in caps or something's happening now. I'm like, it's priced in, you know?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that's why you can't time it with what the news says and can't be emotional about it. Interesting Microsoft. And here's another argument that maybe we're hitting the beginning, like that sell-offs already happened. This is the 200-week moving average, and Microsoft is like, it's respected.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: This way back in 23 was pretty strong.

DANO WEIR: Yo.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right here. And then look where we're at.

DANO WEIR: Yo.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: What do you think?

DANO WEIR: I'm just, that's a, that's a steep drop.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right. Well, and the point is, is that Microsoft is, you know, it's getting into a spot where you would expect support to step in. If we go below this 200-week moving average right there, then it's like generational buy time for Microsoft from an evaluation standpoint. And so you could argue that even Microsoft's starting to find a bottom right here.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And we'll see how it does next week. But it's really respected this over time. So another indicator that maybe we're starting to find a bottom.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think bad news for Apple. Apple's probably headed south from this close this week.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It wouldn't be shocking to see it come down in this area here to $30. Let's look at NVIDIA. Why are these so important again? Well, because they're such a big part of the S&P. NVIDIA's just trading sideways, trying to find. You could argue this is... In distribution now. So a lot of sellers are trying to hand off their NVIDIA.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So kind of mixed results there. I think this Microsoft start's interesting to me.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's similar to the Bitcoin finding that bottom right in there. They're a really good spot for a bottom.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And leading that risk curve. Take a look at Palantir, another darling from this run-up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Interesting, it rejected on this triple top neckline. So there's your triple top, there's your neckline, and then right in this range, it got rejected off this week.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So with that rejection, you could see... I've gone down into 130 space on Palantir.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Special prize for anyone that can tell me what Palantir actually does.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All right. Ag. Chris, man, we're below the 20-period moving average on the ag for the week. That's not a good sign. Definitely lost it on our daily chart. Looks like we're headed into our 200-day moving average. Why? Because interest rates are ripping up. They're going up and we need those interest rates to go back down for those bonds.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They've done pretty well recently though, so it wouldn't be shocking to see things kind of go the other way. You can see interest rates on the weekly chart popped up here above 428. That's not good. That's going to really hit the housing market. It's already in shambles.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So likely to start seeing that 30-year mortgage. Go up but i think there's like i don't think we've had as many buyers or as many sellers versus buyers i think last time it was this low was 2008 not a lot of people are super excited to buy with interest rates where they're at right now tlt bouncing looked like it was going to break out about 200 day and find a bottom Thank you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And it looks like it got rejected. So the bond market is a little rough.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Financials, XLF. So this is the sector that tracks XLF.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Financials has 11 sectors in the S&P 500. It's not looking good. So financials can be a leading indicator. And they're way below their 200-day moving average.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We've got looking like this, it's getting magnetic to this 200 weekly moving average, but it has a long way to go yet. How far down is that? Let's look. Let's see. We're looking at 16% down on financials.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If interest rates are going to go back up, some ways that'll help financials, but just the movement of it's got to be really difficult for the banks to adjust to. XLE this look at energy. So one of the darlings in the S&P look at that XLE trading like a mean stock, folks. Huge breakout.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Obviously related to the Iran epic furry.

DANO WEIR: Epic furry.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm not going to crack that. All right. So the micro strategy going back to. Bitcoin is kind of a trade on Bitcoin because they own so much Bitcoin right now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Looking like a bottom there in that area, right? This is a really strong support area. I don't know. I would definitely be watching Bitcoin in the next few weeks. Looking more and more like a bottom to work.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The yeah it's interesting let's take a look at silver real quick nice run up looks like we're putting in double top and silver though silver to dollar let's see yeah you can see that double top formation right there and you've got a lower hill on the right side. So I think we lose 76 on silver. You see a quick drop at 56. I think that's looking in the card. So if you're a silver person, watch out below.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Hey, look at VIX. A lot of volatility this week, but we didn't settle back down.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Kind of interesting on the VIX.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We really want to get it back down in this 15 area to think they're going to settle down. I could argue it's topping there, though. Let's look at it on a...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's still building, though, because you can see it topped out here then came back down in and then bounced back up. But you could argue there might be a triple top in there, which could be you want volatility to go down, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's just a measure of how excited the people who trade. The S&P 500 futures along. We'll see that go down. We're not seeing that yet. We could argue it's getting there. Keep an eye on that one next week.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Copper futures doing nothing. Sometimes you could argue Dr. Copper tells us what's going to happen. Like it tails down before everything else. So hard to tell now because so much of the economy is built around Copper wire. And building these data centers.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So in some ways, I think that indicator has lost a lot of its value as a leading indicator of the markets.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Let's look at the Dow Jones Transportation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Dow Jones Transportation can sometimes tell us what the... Arteries and economy are doing.

DANO WEIR: T. e.

DANO WEIR: Dow Jones.

DANO WEIR: All right.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So Dow Jones Transportation, if you think about it, it's going to move quicker because it's the arteries economy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Things that need oil to move things around the economy you could argue might be leading us into a bottom here if we lose this area you can see through history we were the four hour this actually look at this this is the four hour we're just losing that 20 20 week average that's pretty bearish this area is going to be lost port you can see it traded right into there i think there'll be quite a bit of support right around here yeah i you know kind of my read on the market guys is i think we got further to go yet but there is some light at the end of the tunnel because we're trying to see Bitcoin and some of these front end of the risk curve assets turning around but i think we should probably be expecting another couple weeks of down based upon what i see on the charts Unfortunately so.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, I think we'll leave it there. On that good news, good news is we might be having a bottom in Bitcoin. Bad news is stocks still haven't found that bottom yet. It doesn't look like.

DANO WEIR: Thank you so much for checking out the show. This has been On The Markets from Sonoma Wealth Advisors and the Fermata Advisors, family of brands, Daren and Chris and myself, Dano. We really appreciate it. One of the, especially if you're one of our clients, we appreciate you checking out the show all the way to the end guys. We got 12 people on the live stream right now.

DANO WEIR: Watching audience of 12 we appreciate that very much maybe even only half of them are bots so we appreciate that wherever you found us YouTube Apple podcast or Spotify make sure to subscribe all episodes are archived on our website cinemawwealth.com so you can catch past episodes if you want to see it on there also our second podcast it's all money and we will see you next week On The Markets you're up to date with Fermata On The Markets.

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