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Finding A Home In The Range
Looks like the consummate professionals on Wall St. have pulled off yet another masterpiece. They were able to cobble together the bullish conditions necessary for the upcoming Anthropic IPO. Back in July, I suggested that the pros on the Street would stop at nothing to get a series of successful IPOs out the door. It appears as though they will overcome all the odds against them and foment demand for another block buster stock offering. The successful IPO of one of the big, household name AI companies was always the key ending to this AI story. Wall Street must show that it can create a successful narrative that sells financial assets. Even after this credit cycle finally ends, the business owners of the world will remember that Wall St. banks can still sell merchandise no matter how dire the conditions. The financial conditions are dire under the surface regardless of what the index levels say. Capital is getting scarce, and the most marginal users of that capital are getting priced out. Some of the business models that depended on 3% rates to operate will be gone within the next year. Other than the biggest player in the space, Ares Capital, all the private credit names are down for the count. The chart of Blue Owl, OBDC, is representative of most of the names in the space. OBDC: These marginal users of capital, the junk bond spreads, and consumer sentiment all tell the truth better than a stock price index like the SPX. The truth is that this business cycle is ending, and we’re already in the contraction phase. But just because the signs are now obvious that the economy is contracting due to higher costs of credit, it doesn’t mean the SPX has to play along and go down. Because it’s imperative for Wall St to get an AI IPO out the door, they will move mountains to create the conditions required for a successful IPO. The first condition is that stock prices don’t decline. Stocks don’t have to go up necessarily, but they mustn’t break down. Below is a chart of the SPX with two particular days annotated. The first is August 4, the day when the number of traded call options on the SPX reached 4 million, an all time high. You can see that the index’s upward thrust was halted. The second day annotated is this week, Oct 19, when an all time high for put volume traded. It would be safe to assume that, just as record call trading halted upward acceleration, any downward acceleration in price has now been taken off the table with a massive open put position. SPX Rangebound: And just like that, an October crash is likely averted. With so much open interest in options with calls defining the top of the range and puts defining the bottom, the market is likely stuck in a range for some time. This is a market that is in balance between buyers and sellers. We’re going to need something unexpected to force the market into an imbalance where it can trend. Until that something occurs, I’m going to try to stay in the game by sizing down, buying weakness, and selling strength. That’s the opposite of what I’d look to do in a trending market where buying strength in breakout trades has a higher probability of working. The type of stocks I’ll look to buy will change as well as the market trades in a range waiting for one side to gain the upper hand. I’ll be looking to bid for stocks that fit with the contraction phase theme. That would be the defensive sectors like medicine stocks. TEVA, BIIB, AUPH, MRK, LLY and JNJ all have the right looking setups, and they all fit in with what the XPH Pharmaceutical ETF is doing. The XPH is holding at the 200 day moving average around $61 and has a low risk stop just below. XPH Trade Plan: This contraction phase should offer some very good opportunities to pick up long term assets that will pay us to own them. Those assets will have to offer better than the 5% we can get with Treasury Bills. That is a hard hurdle to jump over, so stock prices will have to come down significantly. Stocks are a speculative asset, and as such, we shouldn’t even think about owning them unless there is a sufficient margin of safety with a cheap price. Stocks this expensive are for renting only. The last time there was a glaring opportunity to buy long term assets was in 2023 when gold mining stocks were in the doldrums, and central banks were buying gold every month. The price had to rise over $2,000 at some point, but nobody wanted to wait in gold mining stocks at the time. They were a screaming buy. Before that, the opportunity to pick up long term assets was when crude oil crashed in March of 2020. Energy stocks were hated, ESG was all the rage, and because of that, big institutions were underweight energy stocks. The decline in March 2020 was the final leg down that offered patient buyers tremendous assets at discount values to park away in long term ownership. I had held EPD for a long time, but never got the chance to get a big position until March 2020. We will get the opportunity to pick up a left-for-dead sector once again, and indeed, it may already be here for one sector in particular. The housing related stocks have been killed since the 2021 real estate boom ended. After this contraction phase runs its course, the early expansion phase should send housing stocks much higher. I’m looking at names that are tangentially related to housing like WY, WHR, SHW, FND, SWK, ETD, and MHK. These stocks are getting cheap, and a couple are already priced for a severe depression. They’re not out of the woods yet, as we haven’t gotten through the worst
Continue Reading -->Did Michael Dell Say Buy Micron?
ATTN: Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Pristine Mentorship starts soon. Check it out here.What a week! Elon Musk showed us a flying car. Inflation came in hot. And my portfolio got smoked. But… Michael Dell might have handed us a big new idea. Let’s dig in. Skip Ahead! Red October for TechDid Michael Dell Tell Us to Buy Micron?Earning Season Is Going Okay, But Could Be About to Go BOOMMeta Is Key to AISentiment Is NeutralRate Hike Expectations Subject to ChangeREMINDER: Join the Mentorship Red October for TechIt’s been a rough month for tech. QQQ is down 4.1%, while SPY is down just 0.1%. Meanwhile, DIA is up 1.9%. But bizarrely, every S&P sector is up aside from Tech and Communications.And Communications might as well be tech because it includes names like Meta (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL). If we did deeper into the QQQ’s, 55 of 101 names are up in October. Sounds decent. But the average winner is up 6.3%, while the average decliner is down 11.1%. That’s because the decliners list is dominated by beaten-up AI names like SanDisk (SNDK), Nebius Group (NBIS), and CoreWeave (CRWV). Speaking of beaten-up AI names…Did Michael Dell Tell Us to Buy Micron?A Friday Wall Street Journal article about Dell (DELL) included an interesting little nugget from company founder Michael Dell. When speaking about the memory supply crunch, he said “It’s gonna get worse.” Was he telling us to look at Micron (MU), which is trading at 5x forward earnings?Supply shortages favor sellers like Micron. And the longer the shortage, the better for Micron. However, it’s not easy to feel confident when the AI trade is taking the elevator down… Our own JR Romero is a big Micron fan. Here’s why:Earning Season Is Going Okay, But Could Be About to Go BOOMAccording to FactSet, 9% of the S&P 500 has reported earnings. 84% of companies have beaten estimates. However, Q3 earnings are now tracking to grow by 29.0%, slightly below the 29.4% expected last week. This is because earnings beats are smaller than expected, and are being offset by lower estimates in the Health Care sector. However, we are about to get a bunch of big tech earnings reports which have the potential to shift sentiment. Starting with…Meta Is Key to AIEarnings season heats up big time next week, especially in tech. Meta (META) is the biggie, especially when it comes to AI. The market is desperate for reassurance that AI infrastructure spending can keep growing. Because that spending has been key to earnings growth. So consider Meta’s capex guidance a major market catalyst. The higher, the better. (duh) Yes, we have important companies like Netflix (NFLX), Tesla (TSLA), and Lam Research (LRCX) reporting, but Meta is the big one.Sentiment Is NeutralThe latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 38.7% of investors are bullish.That’s pretty much in-line with the long-term average of 37.5%. By 41.6% of investors said they were bearish, which is above the 31.5% historical average. Plus, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index is at just 18/100, indicating Extreme Fear.So it looks this market’s short on joyous participants.Rate Hike Expectations Subject to ChangeEven with hot CPI and PPI reports this week, expectations for the October 28 FOMC meeting haven’t changed much, according to the CME’s FedWatch Tool. The market is pricing in a 17.2% chance of a 25 bp rate hike, down from 27.7% last week.And the market expects an 88.2% chance of at least one hike by year-end. Not a big change from last week.REMINDER: Join the Mentorship Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Pristine Mentorship starts soon. Learn about it here. Want to get to know them? Watch this webinar:
Continue Reading -->Assume the Crash Position
There’s an old Wall St. legend that Joseph Kennedy Sr. kept the family fortune that he amassed from bootlegging by getting out of stocks just before the 1929 crash. His opportune timing was the result of his astute observation that even his shoe shine boy was giving him stock tips. Kennedy reasoned that if even the most uninformed shoe shine boy was levering up in stocks, there was literally no one left to buy stocks. I was reminded of that legend last week standing in line at the bank. There was an octogenarian at the only open teller, and I was next in line. While patience is the only virtue I possess naturally, and abundantly so, even my heroic levels of patience wore thin as I waited for this elderly gentlemen to figure out how to use the card reader to allow the teller to access his account. He was completely oblivious to the line forming behind him as he recounted his stories from opening up his first bank account in the 1970’s while the teller came out from behind the booth to operate the card reader for the old man. His stories went on, and he divulged many details about his financial life as the line grew longer behind me. He was there to transfer money from his RMD, the required minimum distribution, from his IRA. He was heavily in stocks and quite excited about all his gains that allowed him to now consume in his retirement. He struck me as someone whose enthusiasm for the stock market was far greater than his aptitude in operating in the stock market. This was my shoe shine boy moment. I saw embodied in this old man the spirit of a hapless shoeshine boy whose entire fortune is resting on hopes of a greater fool to come along and buy his stock from him at a higher price. This was the moment my bearish inclination hardened into a firm resolve to short this market. The market breadth has been bothering me for some time, and I’ve been in about 75% cash for a while, but this short setup is too perfect to pass up so I’m reflecting my increased bearishness by shorting. I’ve been laying out my bearish case for over a month. Nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind, and it remains this: I think the 2026 market looks awfully similar to the 1987 and 1929 stock market crashes. We saw a summer rally, a break in late August, and now we are in the rally back up to the break level. All that remains is a failure to recapture the breakdown level, and then an October crash would complete the template. The signal I’ve been waiting for occurred Wednesday this week. The signal I wanted was a follow through day to the down side after a failure at the breakdown level. Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average got rejected at the $53K level on bank earnings. Wednesday is what I’m considering the follow through day. I’ve got a low risk stop right above the 50 day moving average which is 2% higher. A good crash could see a 20% down move so this risk to reward setup is too good to pass up. Here’s a pro tip, if you ever get a 10:1 odds payout, you take that trade every single time. I win on only 60% of my trades, so there’s a 40% chance I get stopped out of this trade at a loss. I’ve accepted the terms of the trade, and I’ll live with the consequences. This is a trade I like because I think I’ve got an edge here. That edge is my knowledge of historical precedent for a crash. I like to read old newspapers from the 1929 era to get a feel for the zeitgeist. Recently I’ve been reading the Financial Chronicle. One thing that stands out is how commonly accepted was the inevitability of a crash due to all the speculative excess that was occurring for two years leading up to the top. Back then, as will be this time, blame was placed on the Fed’s easy money policies. Back then, it was understood that the Fed’s credit creation was leading to all manner of unprofitable business venture that served no purpose (read the Oct 26, 1929 edition of the Financial Chronicle). Today we have crypto currencies, and there is untold amounts of time, talent, and treasure poured into this enterprise of dubious value. Nothing has changed in a century since the last big crash or since the South Sea collapse three centuries ago. Human nature remains the same today as it has been throughout all human history. We tend to over estimate the benefits of the future and look for ways to get rich quickly. This is what allows bubbles to form. Like all bubbles, this one too must eventually pop, and my view is that this one’s time has come. Of course the pundits will blame speculators when this bubble pops. But of course it’s not us speculators that cause the bubble. It’s policy makers that create the incentives for bubbles to inflate. This time around, with the Internet, there will be a permanent record (until it eventually gets scrubbed) of all the warnings since 2012 made by market participants that policy makers were setting us up for some terrible bubble to form that would eventually succumb to market forces and pop. The pin that pops this bubble could be a foreign central bank move. Either the Bank of Japan or the People’s Bank of China are likely culprits. The pin could also be an Anthropic IPO. This would suck up massive amounts of speculative capital and unleash tons of new shares into the market. The AI trade in general looks vulnerable with a topping pattern in the SMH. It looks like a double top to me. The last top at $630 also has an island with three days of isolated
Continue Reading -->SpaceX the Phone Company?
ATTN: Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Pristine Mentorship starts soon. Check it out here.What a week! AI stumbled on reports of disappointing revenues at OpenAI. Middle East tensions kept oil prices high. US Treasury iields hit multi-decade highs. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX might be your new phone company! Let’s jump into it. Skip Ahead! October Is Getting BetterElon Musk Wants a Big Piece of the Phone/Internet/Cable PieJensen Huang Might Be Right About MarvellSentiment Is NeutralNext Week Will Be LoudRate Hike Expectations Subject to ChangeREMINDER: Join the Mentorship October Is Getting BetterSeptember was a very tricky month, with just 113 of S&P 500/SPY stocks up for the month. The average name was down 4.6%, and tech was the only major sector that was in the green. Things are broadening out in October. The SPY is up 2.1% for the month, and every sector is in the green, aside from Communications.And Communications would be positive if not for T-Mobile (TMUS) and Verizon (VZ), which got hit after Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX) agreed to buy up wireless phone spectrum. Speaking of that news…Elon Musk Wants a Big Piece of the Phone/Internet/Cable PieSpaceX is looking to acquire low-band wireless spectrum from Grain Management. Upon FCC approval, SpaceX Mobile aims to become “a major mobile carrier in the US.” That’s because this new spectrum works indoors, unlike SpaceX’s Starlink, which generally requires a clear view of the sky. SpaceX also got FCC approval to launch 15,000 new Starlink satellites that supposedly offer 100 times the bandwidth of the current generation Americans spend hundreds of billions per year on phone, internet, and television service. Elon wants a piece of that pie. So before long, we might be paying Elon for combined phone and data service! That could mean tens of billions a year in revenue for SpaceX. By the way, here’s JR Romero’s take on SpaceX stock:Jensen Huang Might Be Right About MarvellIn June, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said Marvell Technology could be the next trillion-dollar company because of wild demand for networking infrastructure. It looks like Jensen might be right. I later bought Marvell stock, because I assume Jensen knows what’s getting bought in the world of AI infrastructure. And since Nvidia owns a $2 billion stake in Marvell, I gotta figure the companies will do lots of business together. Anyway…At Marvell’s Investor Day on Tuesday, the company issued FY2028 revenue guidance of $20 billion, and FY2031 guidance of $70 to $90 billion. These numbers were well above Wall Street estimates. This is just the latest in a stream of “all systems go” indicators for the AI industry. Because in recent weeks, we’ve seen AI-dependent companies like Micron (MU), Everpure (P), and Penguin Solutions (PENG) deliver huge results and guidance. This week, the market raised its eyebrows on a report that OpenAI’s revenues were lower-than-expected. But observers were comparing OpenAI’s reported numbers with Anthropic’s, which uses a different method of calculating revenue.Sentiment Is NeutralThe latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 40.3% of investors are bullish.That’s technically above the long-term average of 37.5%. However, it comes after three straight weeks of bearish readings. So that’s not exactly a sign of an ecstatic crowd. Plus, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index is at just 46/100, indicating neutral sentiment.So there’s not a ton of enthusiasm for a market near all-time highs. I’d guess people are still smarting from a rough September.Next Week Will Be LoudThis week was quiet. Next will be loud. We’ll get the critical CPI and PPI reports, and FOMC Chair Kevin Warsh will appear on an IMF Panel on Thursday. And earning season starts cranking Tuesday with JP Morgan (JPM), UnitedHealth (UNH), Goldman Sachs (GS), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citi (C). We also have two major tech reports with semiconductor giants ASML (ASML) and Taiwan Semi (TSM). Investors want them to indicate that AI-driven semiconductor demand remains sky-high.Rate Hike Expectations Subject to ChangeThe market is pricing in a 19.4% chance of a 25 bp rate hike at the October 28 meeting, according to the CME’s Fedwatch Tool.And the market expects an 86.4% chance of at least one hike by year-end. However, based on the busy economic calendar next week, these numbers could change, big time.REMINDER: Join the Mentorship Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Pristine Mentorship starts soon. Learn about it here. Want to get to know them? Watch this webinar:
Continue Reading -->Brace for Impact
I’ve been trying to catch the bottom in TLT and the top in rates since March. Thrice I’ve thought I’ve seen a bottom, bought, and have gotten stopped out for a loss with the third attempt occurring this week at $77 on the TLT. Rates should have spiked out in the last Fed meeting and be sinking back towards 3.75% by now, and the market should be breathing a sigh of relief. Instead, rates on the 10yr remain “bid”, and the 2-10 yield curve is re-steepening. This is a pretty wicked bear steepener at a moment when we should be seeing a bull steepener where the short end falls as the business cycle enters into the contraction phase. The facts that Warsh raised at the last meeting and that there is talk of another hike this month are alarming. I’m not saying the Fed is doing anything wrong, as I think they really just follow the bond market where it wants to take rates rather than set rates themselves (which is the way it should be in a free market system), but the fact that they keep seeing a need to hike means that the natural path for rates is higher even at these elevated levels. The dollar agrees with rates as its uptrend remains firm. Every penny above $101 on the DXY is pulling demand from financial assets like stocks and broadcasting the slowing velocity of dollars in the real economy. While the real economy is not in as terrible of shape as people feel, the financial economy is in a far more dire situation than prices would suggest. Stocks are far too expensive for any real capital allocators to step up and bid even if we get a 20% correction. I think the odds of an October crash are increasing with every tick higher in the 10yr yield. In real life, it’s irresponsible to yell “fire” in a crowded theater, but when my irreplaceable capital is on the line, my policy is to panic first and ask questions later. I can always chase stocks higher if I need to. There will be wave after wave of sectors and stocks in those sectors that setup and breakout if this spurt higher in the S&P and the NDX has legs and the market gets away from me while I’m in 75% cash. I’m wondering now if even that much cash is too little… Policy makers have staved off a normal correction at every turn since 2012. Capital allocators have never forgotten, and prices seem to have a memory as well; the SPX tagged its 2014 highs in the March 2020 spike down as a form of declaration that the move from those levels has significance. Like water in a container after a perturbance, stock prices will want to level out at a natural equilibrium, but we have no idea where that is after a decade of central planning. I’ve been waiting for a rally back to $53,000 in the DJI for a chance to short, but now I’m wondering if I’ll get that chance at all. The way I thought this story of a market top would play out is a nice looking, although unhealthy breakout in the SPX and NDX and a bounce in the DJI and RUT near their 200 day moving averages; all being the result of a normal bounce in the US Treasury bond long end as rates peaked then sank lower. There still may be a chance it plays out that way, but the TLT would have to bounce hard in the up coming week. We’d want to see the bonds rally as SPX falls as that would indicate a normal end of a cycle and maybe a 20-30% drop in stocks (which wouldn’t alleviate the expensiveness of stocks, but prices of all things may never get back to pre 2020 levels). I was expecting that level of correction to happen pretty quickly in October which would give it a “crash” feeling. But if rates keep going higher, and assuming I’m correct in my view that stocks reset lower this month, it means we have something else on our hands entirely. There are exactly zero market participants that have a working memory of trading through a market when both stocks and bond are declining. That’s the scenario we could have in front of us if the TLT doesn’t start reversing hard this week. The last time stocks and bonds declined in unison was in the 1970’s, and to viscerally remember the experience of trading through that, a trader would have had to have been in his 30’s then, which would make him in his late 80’s now. We don’t have any 86 year old traders now that Buffett is retired. The only source of knowledge we have on that period in market history has to come from books. Buffett’s annual letters are the only source I’ve read on the topic, and it doesn’t sound like an environment in which traders conditioned to a decade of central bank intervention could thrive. We are all products of the environment in which we grow, and while it is possible for a skilled trader to adapt to a new market environment, the unfortunate reality is that a bull market makes many traders more successful but undisciplined. I’ve known traders that came of age in the bull market in the late 90’s and got rich. They were professional traders that made it through the .com burst and kept winning into the 2008 burst, but they struggled to adapt to the QE era starting in 2012. Some of those guys were amazing traders, pushed through their obstacles and are still winning consistently in the market today. One saw even more success in 2021 than he ever had in decades of successful trading and retired from full time trading with a massive account in the 8 figures. These guys are proof that we can adapt and thrive in any market environment.
Continue Reading -->Desperation for Dollars and Liquidity
The Nasdaq 100 has gone nowhere for 4 months. Trillions in market cap is simply treading water. The price weighted Dow Jones Industrial Average has been declining for 2 months. Its two largest components are GS and CAT at $900 and $800 respectively. Both topped out over two months ago. The next largest component, MSFT, is a $500 stock, and it put in a 52 week high almost a year ago with a double top completed in Oct, 2025. While the SPX and NDX are near highs, the number of stocks making new 52 week highs is sinking lower with every rally in the averages. The number of new 52 week lows is expanding with every impulse higher in the averages. This is an unhealthy market. Insiders in many of the stocks I follow have been selling their shares all year while they use shareholder equity to do share buy backs of the very same shares they themselves are selling out of their personal holdings. The insiders know what their stocks are worth, and they are voting with their own money. Valuations of stocks in every single sector are far in excess of the average earnings power an owner of those shares can expect to receive over 15 or more years. This is an expensive market. It’s the banking sector that is most troubling from a valuation perspective. As the rate on the 10yr US Treasury Bond rises, the assets that sit on the regional banks’ balance sheets deteriorate in value. In the depths of the SVB crisis in 3Q 2023, regional banks were holding unrealized losses of $675B on their books vs $2T of equity capital. Rates are now higher than they were then. We changed accounting rules for “held to maturity” assets then so we could pretend our banking sector was solvent, and we must continue to pretend now even though their assets are presumably worth even less than during the SVB crisis. We’ll have to wait another month to get the total unrealized losses sitting on regional banks’ balance sheets after this most recent rise in rates. The potential exists that one third of our banking system’s equity is impaired in long duration assets they can’t sell from their books. This is exactly what happened in the S&L crisis in the 1980’s. The savings & loans went bust, and the banking system created the collateralized debt obligation security market to package up all the low interest rate loans no one wanted to buy in a high rate environment. We later realized this was in part the origin of the 2008 GFC, as the CDO market went into overdrive by the early 2000’s. This time however, the impaired assets aren’t held by a niche corner of the banking system. The impaired assets make up a major portion of all regional banks’ balance sheets. The stock market seems to be in a state of suspended animation. The SPX and NDX seem like they want to breakout higher. The DJIA, DJT, DJU, and RUT aren’t in a mood to follow. The market needs a catalyst to move in either direction. I think there’s only one bullish catalyst that could propel the market higher: an end to the Iran situation and a resumption of trade relations with China. There are rumors leaking out now that indicate we could see that, but even if that news does come out soon, the market should look right past that to post midterms when the conflict is almost sure to resume. Any rally on Iran or China news should bring the DJIA back up to the $53K level I’ve been watching to short. In fact, I’m counting on a rally in the next couple weeks to test out my theory on an October crash. A failure for the DJIA to trade above $53,700 before Halloween makes a crash a high probability event by my analysis. While there’s plenty to dislike in this market, there’s three interrelated forces I see driving the current environment. The stock market is being ruled by a triumvirate of higher rates, a higher dollar, and lower liquidity. Rates are going higher across the developed world. Only China is not seeing rate increases. The most common explanation for the higher rates is that global growth is picking up, but I can’t see any indication of that accelerating growth in the stocks that should be benefiting from growth. The growth explanation to rising rates floats like a lead balloon. The real reason rates are going higher is simple: asset holders are selling their bonds to raise the much needed dollars to keep up with rising borrowing costs. As the DXY rises above $101, we are witnessing the scarcity of dollars in real time. Every penny above $101 is another tranche of demand pull away from financial assets. A plethora of dollars means lots of potential demand for financial assets that can go into stocks and support prices. A scarcity of dollars implies the opposite. Without the willingness to freely supply dollars, liquidity in the financial system is drained, and asset prices are vulnerable. No asset is more vulnerable than an absurdly expensive stock market that has to compete with short term US debt for income. Long term holders of stocks are sitting on massive gains. They’re eyeing the real rates they can get by switching into bonds now. Real rates are over 2% now and increasing. Due to these higher real rates, bonds are acting as competition for increasingly scarce dollars that need a home. Gold is sinking as real rates rise. Gold is showing us the future path for stocks unless policy makers respond with liquidity creation soon. I’ve always followed the gold signal, and right now, gold is telling me there is a deflationary event on the horizon. It’s been my view for some time that the deflationary event is the end of the current business cycle. The business cycle is obviously entering into the contraction phase, but Warsh
Continue Reading -->AI Earnings Boom: Never-Ending Story?
ATTN: Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young are hosting an Open House next week. Sign up now for 5 full days of day and swing trades, plus in-depth training. 100% free. September was a slopfest and rate hikes may be farther away than we thought. Meanwhile, the AI earnings boom just got more ridiculous. So let’s dig in to the biggest and baddest stories in the market. Skip Ahead! September Was RoughMicron & the Ridiculous AI Earnings Boom Sentiment Is Still Not BullishNo Rate Hikes?Next Week Is About RestREMINDER: Join the Open house September Was RoughSPY was down 0.3% in September, while the QQQs were up 3.3%. Not so bad. But things were way uglier below the surface. Just look at all the red in this table showing September ETF performance:Just 113 of S&P 500/SPY stocks were up for the month, and the average name was down 4.6%. And by the end of the month, the average stock was 21.1% off its 52-week high. Essentially, you had to be overweight the right tech names (mostly semiconductors) to have had a decent month.Micron & the Ridiculous AI Earnings Boom Memory maker Micron (MU) dropped another amazing earnings report after the close, and AI is the driver. This chart showing Micron’s quarterly earnings per share over the past 10 years illustrates just how transformative AI has been:Micron earned $33.42 per share last quarter, more than 10X the $2.59 it earned in its last quarterly earnings peak in 2022. By the way, JR Romero expects Micron to hit $1,434. See why here:And the AI earnings boom seems to get more ridiculous by the week. FactSet reports that analysts now expect S&P 500 earnings growth of 29.1% in Q3, which would be the third straight quarter of 25%+ growth. And AI monsters like Nvidia (NVDA), Dell (DELL), and Super Micro (SMCI) are leading the charge. Estimates are going up so fast that analysts expect 63.5% earnings growth in the Information Technology sector. That is wild. It’s not like this is the first year of a bull market where we’re working off easy year-over-year comparisons. We are almost 4 years into the AI cycle and it shows zero sign of slowing! Starting to feel like a never-ending story.Sentiment Is Still Not BullishThe latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that just 34.6% of investors are bullish.This is the third straight week of below-average bullishness. Meanwhile, bearishness remains high at 46.5%. Plus, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index is at just 32/100, indicating moderate fear.So there remains little enthusiasm for the market as a whole.No Rate Hikes?Friday’s weaker-than-expected Nonfarm Payrolls report came in the wake of the Fed’s Williams saying there is no urgency for rate hikes. So now the market is pricing in a mere 20.5% chance of a rate hike at the October 28 meeting:That’s down from 64.2% last week. However, traders are still pricing in an 81.9% chance of at least one rate hike by year-end.Next Week Is About RestThis week had some key events like the Micron (MU) earnings report and the Nonfarm Payrolls report. Next week, we get to take a break. There are no market-moving earnings reports or major economic data. But remember, we could get news on Iran so keep an eye out.REMINDER: Join the Open house Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Open House begins Monday. Jump in now! Want to get to know them? Watch this webinar:
Continue Reading -->Why Apple Is My Favorite AI Stock
What a week! Meta (META) became an AI superstar, bond yields hit new highs, and I found yet another reason to love Apple (AAPL). Let’s dig in! Skip Ahead! September = SlopWe Have Yet Another AI MonsterApple Is My Favorite AI StockSentiment Is Not BullishTraders Fear Higher RatesFed Expectations Point to HikesNext Week Is About Two ThingsREMINDER: The Pristine Mentorship Is Open September = SlopSeptember is historically the worst month of the year for the S&P 500, but we’ve squeezed into the green:However, just 137 of S&P 500/SPY stocks are up for the month, and the average individual name is down 3.1%. And only 2 of 11 S&P sectors are positive: Technology and Communication Services Interestingly, the Communication Sectors sector has a 22% weighting in Meta (META), which is up over 31% this month on the back of its Muse AI launch. It would be in the red if not for Meta. Related: Why META Is Going to $1,000 So while we could theoretically write a headline “SPY Is Up for September,” the underlying data stinks outside of tech. Meanwhile, small caps have been getting destroyed with IWM down over 3% because of higher interest rates. JR Romero explains here: We Have Yet Another AI MonsterEvery week, I learn about another company reporting blockbuster demand because of AI buildouts. Last week, it was power infrastructure name Forgent Power Solutions (FPS). This week, it was data storage play Everpure (P), which used to be called Pure Storage. The stock exploded Thursday after the company announced monster guidance for FY2028, thanks to AI-driven demand.On Friday, Goldman Sachs said it expects the 5 biggest US hyperscalers (Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Meta) to spend $1.2 trillion on AI infrastructure next year. That’s up 54% from this year.Apple Is My Favorite AI StockThere is another AI infrastructure boom happening… at home. More and more people and companies are opting for open-source AI models that run on local computers. That’s because if you run locally, you avoid monthly or per-token charges, and you have greater control of your data. This market appears to be dominated by Apple’s (AAPL) Mac Mini and Mac Studio, which get rave reviews because of their warp-speed processing and low power consumption. Apple just released new Mini and Studio models on Tuesday. I spent some time on Apple.com researching different configurations to see how fast they ship. The earliest shipping date I could find for a Mac Mini was October 15-22. And some Mac Studio configurations don’t ship for another 15-17 weeks. The Mac accounted for just 9% of Apple sales last quarter. I suspect that number will go way up. The Information reported in August that Apple itself was surprised by how many enterprises are using Mac hardware for AI. And they also said Apple was considering a return to the server market. If that happens, let’s pray for the shorts. Apple is my largest stock position, so take what I saw with a grain of salt.Sentiment Is Not BullishThe latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that just 32.7% of investors are bullish.This is up from 28.8% last week, but it’s still below the long-term average of 37.5%. Meanwhile, 48.8% of investors are bearish, which is well above the average of 31.5%. Plus, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index is at just 38/100, indicating modest fear.So there remains little enthusiasm for the market. And it looks like rates are an issue.Traders Fear Higher RatesOn Thursday evening, I asked members of the Alpha Team VTF® if they were worried about higher rates. 65% of members said yes. Plus, many more members manually typed out a “Yes” instead of taking the poll This wasn’t the most scientific survey in the world (sampling one room of active traders after a tricky day in the market), but rates are clearly a worry.Fed Expectations Point to HikesLast week, the FOMC raised rates by 25 bps, with Chair Kevin Warsh saying “The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long.” The CME’s FedWatch Tool now shows the market is pricing in a 64% chance of a 25 bps rate hike at the October meeting.That’s up from just 10% one month ago. And the market is pricing in a 51% chance of 50 bp in total hikes by year-end.Next Week Is About Two ThingsObviously, the market wants to see US Treasury yields and crude oil down. Plus some kind of deal between the US and Iran to get the Strait of Hormuz fully open. But as far as the official trading calendar goes, two things matter. The first is the Nonfarm Payrolls Report on Friday. And the second is Micron’s (MU) earnings report on Wednesday. I think this is bigger. As noted, demand for AI infrastructure just keeps going up, so in all likelihood, Micron will sing the same old song about being supply-constrained. But on the off chance Micron says anything negative, expect havoc in the market. Because AI is clearly holding the economy and market up. Anyway, if you care, this is what else is coming:REMINDER: The Pristine Mentorship Is Open Sami Abusaad and James Rich Young’s Pristine Mentorship is open and there are just 13 spots left. In this video, they take you through the 4 steps to becoming an elite trader.
Continue Reading -->Bull or Bear? Pick a Side and Fight
Have you ever wondered why we refer to the daily battle of buying and selling that takes place on Wall Street as the bulls vs. the bears? I think it has to do with the nature of each beast’s relationship to man. A bull sees its target, puts its head down and horns up, and charges ahead no matter what obstacle is in its way. A bull doesn’t stop until it either kills or is killed by the matador. A bear spends much of its time in hibernation and hiding, and it only makes its presence known at the moment of attack. A bear keeps away until a victim enters its territory. In trading we’ve got to take the same approach as these two beasts. If we do the work and determine that we should be bullish, we’ve got to charge ahead on the long side and disregard obstacles. If you’ve ever been long a stock that was charging higher, you know how great the temptation can be to sell early and lock in profit to make sure it doesn’t slip away. Ignoring the negatives in a real bull trend higher is a difficult skill to attain, and perhaps the best we can do is try to hold on a little longer each time we’re in one. In the same vein, if we do the work and determine the appropriate stance is bearish, we’ve got to wait for the market to come into the area we want, then attack and leave. Bulls charge relentlessly, and bears maul swiftly. This is the proper way we should think about our own trading. Each one of us has to determine for ourselves whether we are bullish or bearish. There’s much work that goes into that conclusion, but once we’ve chosen a side, we must use our capital to fight. As for myself, I’ve determined that the appropriate stance for my irreplaceable capital is on the bear side. I’m in 75% cash and waiting for a spot to short. I’m waiting for price to come into the area I want, about $53,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and then like a bear, I’ll attack. The market is leaning bullish now with the SPX and NDX breaking higher so the DJIA could get nearer the $53K level in the last weeks of September or by the first couple of weeks in October. I’m looking to short the DJIA ETF, the DIA, at around $530 with a tight stop above $537.75 which is the high for September. Above $540 on the DIA and I’ll flip to bullish and scramble to get long something. I’ve also incorporated a time stop into my trade plan: if stocks haven’t started to decline by Halloween, I’ll abandon the bear side for the rest of the year. I’m not going to hold on to a losing position just because I’ve done a thorough analysis and decided I’m bearish. DIA Trade Plan: But what exactly are the facts that give me a reason to be bearish? Merely being “concerned” about stocks’ advance is not a rigorous analysis. Professional speculation requires real analytical work, especially when trying to pinpoint a bull to bear turn. I’ve done the work that leads me to the conclusion that there’s a near picture perfect analog to the 1929 and 1987 crashes. I’ve kept a checklist of signs to indicate when the turn in the business cycle is approaching, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for the anecdotal evidence I remember from the 2008 crash like constant road construction as municipalities rush to spend the record high tax revenues from a previously booming economy and signs of excess like the Hummer EV, which is a nearly exact replica of the sign of excess of the Hummer H2 I saw in the housing boom leading up to the 2008 crash. But a proper analysis requires more than just anecdotal evidence to be taken seriously. So I’ll present my bear case here for anyone to pick apart. Below is a video showing my analysis of the 1929 and 1987 crashes and how they resemble the current market in 2026. 1929 and 1987 Comparison to 2026 video: In addition to the historical October crash analogs, I see further evidence that we are in the early stage of a bear market when I look outside the popular stocks. Aside from several mega cap technology stocks, the underlying market health has been deteriorating for some time. The transports and utility stocks are not confirming any of the bullish narrative. On the contrary, they are looking more like tops. I’ve never seen a bull market in stocks work out with the transports and utilities in a compromised price structure like they currently exhibit. DJT: DJU: The housing stocks are also showing stress. Housing is a major driver of consumer spending which is 70% of our economy. With Warsh’s latest rate increase, I don’t see how housing will pick up without a major move lower in house prices. Neither higher rates or lower prices are going to be supportive of higher economic activity in the short run. XHB: Warsh’s latest rate hike also reminds me of 1987. Alan Greenspan was selected as the new Fed Chair in August of 1987. He thought that business activity was too hot and consumer prices were about to skyrocket so he took rates from 6.5% in August to 8% by October 1987. The rate hikes proved too difficult for the bull market to charge through. The rate hikes were the banderillas thrust into that bull market’s back to wound it, and Treasury Secretary James Baker’s October 18th remarks that he would tolerate a much weaker dollar in response to the Bundesbank’s rate hike was the estocada, the fatal blow delivered to the bull market. Stocks crashed the next day. So far, Warsh’s tenor as Fed Chair is a great analog to Greenspan’s just before the 1987 crash. Aiding my bearish stance is the fact that we’ve
Continue Reading -->Bottom-Up Roadmap for Stocks Over the Next 6-9 Months
Every trader, in order to be successful, must have some systematic process for identifying, entering, and exiting trades. Each trader’s specific process is going to be unique to their own experiences and beliefs. My own process has been developed over almost 20 years in markets, first as a hobby while I was a telephone salesman in a cubicle for a big tech company, next as a trader on a prop desk, then as a professional equity portfolio manager for a small RIA, and lastly as a refinement when I completed the CFA exam. Because I operated in both the trading and investing worlds, my process is a combined approach that incorporates both fundamentals and technicals. Similarly, I combine both a top-down and bottom-up approach to asset, sector, and individual stock selection. In previous posts I’ve explained my top-down reasoning why my view continues to be that we are in the contraction phase of the business cycle. This week I’ll present what my bottom-up analysis reveals to us as we try to anticipate price movements in the stock market over the next few quarters into 2027. As opposed to a top-down approach which starts from trends and works down more granularly to individual stocks, a bottom-up approach starts with individual stocks and works up to extrapolate larger themes. A bottom-up approach is a wonderful antidote for the narrative heavy environment in which we currently find ourselves. An analysis of individual stocks often reveals that a popular narrative is not gaining traction in the stocks that should be strong if the narrative were true. As a naturally born contrarian, I’m skeptical of any popularly accepted narrative, and I rely heavily on scrolling through thousands of charts a week to verify that the prevailing narrative is being validated by price. Thankfully, we don’t have to go over thousands of stocks to get a workable roadmap for how to deal with this market into 4Q 2026 and early 2027. A smaller sample of stocks is enough so I’ll keep my bottom-up analysis contained to a manageable list of sectors and stocks in this week’s post. I’ve taken the leading stocks in the sectors that are most crucial to the US business cycle at the moment: semi-conductors, transports, industrials, utilities, chemicals, and basic materials. The industrial sector contains seven sub industry groups: aerospace, automotive, construction, distribution, electrical equipment, building products, and machinery. I’m focusing on just the leading stocks in these sectors because I think they are a full representation of the most influential narrative in the stock market today: the AI buildout. I want to analyze the individual stocks in these sectors to discover any clues they might tell us about the future path of the AI buildout, which will dictate the path of the US business cycle, which will ultimately influence stock prices. We start at the bottom and work our way up to get to our goal: anticipating the movement of stock prices. The sectors and stocks we’ll analyze seem like a lot of material to digest, but I’ve distilled the information down to a basic form that is easy to absorb in a short amount of time. It’s a useful exercise for anyone risking their capital in the stock market. These are the stocks we’ll be analyzing in each sector; semi-conductor: ADI, AVGO, MRVL, MU, QCOM, TSM, and TXN; transports: UNP, NSC, CSX, JBHT, ODFL, DAL, and UAL; industrials: aerospace: GE, RTX, BA, LMT, GD, HWM, TDG, LHX, and NOC; auto parts: MGA, BWA, and MOD; construction: PWR and FIX; distribution: URI, GWW, and FAST; electrical equipment: ETN, VRT, and EMR; building products: TT and JCI; and machinery: CAT, DE, PH, ITW, CMI; utilities: SO, NEE, and DUK; chemicals: APD, DOW, LYB, SHW, ECL, PPG, and DD; and basic materials: BHP, RIO, FCX and NEM. I’ll begin on the fundamental side and analyze the valuations and end with a video on the technical side to show what I think the price and volume structures are warning us about. The only goal I have when analyzing fundamentals is to answer the question “do I want to own this stock?” That means I like to think as a business owner would if he was considering pouring all his family’s capital and his life’s energy into a business. I like to take the 15 year average of pretax income as a rough estimate of what the company would be able to earn on average over a business cycle, in other words, its earnings power. If the market cap of equity is 10 times the average earnings power, I know that stock is probably below fair value. If 10x is below fair value, 20 times the average 15 year earnings power is about the top of the limit. 20x means there’s very little room left for good price appreciation from an ownership perspective. Stocks that trade this high are for rentals only, not ownership, as they are mainly earnings growth stories that can experience temporary, but powerful price movement in either direction. The market cap to earnings power ratio over this 15 year time frame is what I refer to as the PE15. I like to see lots of sectors with low PE15s because that means too few positive outcomes are priced in, and any good development will cause money to flow in. If enough sectors of the market have low PE15s, it means the market is attractive as a long term asset. Long term buyers are what create price trends that last. However, if the market is unattractive to long term money, I would not expect a new price trend higher to materialize in the next 6 to 9 months. The PE15’s for each group of stocks by sector and my assessment of the potential for a proper trend higher are listed below, but if you want to jump to the conclusion without any of the detail, here it is: with a couple exceptions in mainly chemical commodities, natural resources, and small auto
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