[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Stocks keep coiling near their all-time highs ahead of a slew of Big Tech earnings releases. In fact, by the time you read this, Google and Snapchat ought to have reported, and the releases won’t let up anytime soon. We’re also due to get a look at big inflation and employment reports this week, leading into an imminent Fed rate cut. And, lest we forget, there’s a presidential election next week. So, yes, headline risk is out there, creeping steadily higher. It’d be a mistake to ignore it. All the same, it’d be an even more grave mistake to hunker down and hide. Here’s why: Bitcoin is within spitting distance of its all-time high, while precious metals continue an impressive run of outperformance. We’ll talk about this and more tonight.

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The S&P 500 finished modestly higher as crude oil slipped over 5% on the day. With oil down, you would think that U.S. Treasury bonds would be up as the inflation monster is further tamed. If that was your thought process, you would be wrong! While oil is only surface level analysis on the future of inflation, debt and deficits are much more structural. With the Treasury set to borrow over $500B dollars in the fourth quarter of 2024, the inflationary pressure can’t be set aside with a 5% decline in oil prices. What is the bottom line with a little over a week until election, runaway spending and geopolitical risk, take the money and run! Let’s look at how we can do that…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The S&P 500 and Dow are closing out the week with losses, despite a few up days here and there. The NASDAQ on the other hand is up… oooh… a whopping 0.35% in the past five days. As I’d say on any given morning, “massively unchanged!” Most of that NASDAQ gain is because Tesla kicked the tech index in its @#% with a decent earnings report and dragged it along for the ride. Unless something dies next week, tech as a whole is on track to have a decent month; XLK is sitting on a 2.7% October gain right now. Financials… well… they’re down bad. Bierman’s been hollering for more than a week about a bubble forming in asset managers and brokers, and he’s not wrong. Thanks to interest rate trouble, it looks like that might be coming to a

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] What a week – after fighting up to all time highs, it’s like the market keeps banging its head on higher highs and then shrinking away. It’s done that every single day this week, not really selling off, but not powering through, either. There’s a lot of low volume, and when you couple that with a failure to break out… well, we’ll talk about what that means. At the same time, we’re seeing action in our inflation yardsticks, gold and Treasuries – whether it’s gold going up or Treasuries going down or some combination of the two. We’ve got our hands full tonight. Let’s get right into it.

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The S&P 500 has been… pretty boring lately, bouncing around in an extraordinarily tight range. But everything around stocks has been making huge moves. Gold, dollars, bonds – all seeing tremendous action to the up- and downside. But now we’re starting to see volatility creep back up – it always creeps before it punches you in the face, doesn’t it? And today we saw some of that sell-side activity bleed over into stocks. The dip-buyers are coming out, but the bear’s out of the bag. Here’s what you need to know…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the market has been trying to lull traders to sleep over the past week. Nevertheless, stocks have continued to press up against their highs. The U.S. dollar continues to suck global capital into American markets, though we may see a temporary top around Election Day. At least, I’m not ruling it out. Outside of the headlines, I’ve been watching tremendous opportunities in financials (yes, you read that right), nuclear energy, and the tech sector. I’ve talked about a few of those already, but this is a long-term trend. Let’s look at what’s happening out there…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Bonds have been quietly (as usual) selling off as the S&P 500 tests new all-time highs. Of course, for folks like me who’re in the markets all day, “quiet” is anything but; rate-sensitive corners of the market may finally take notice after today’s sell-off. Now, I can hear you ask: “What does interest rate-sensitive mean, anyway?” Quite simply, it’s those segments of the market that have a correlation with the bond market. Utilities and real estate, for example, will benefit from lower borrowing costs and will pay a relatively higher dividend. Gold is another. The yellow metal historically has benefited from lower yields; the opportunity cost of holding gold increases alongside yields. Gold is currently outperforming most other sectors in the one-, three-, six-, and 12-week timeframes, but it’s also trading at all-time highs. Of course, something’s got to give.

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The VIX, which had been mostly stuck above 20, is falling fast – 18 and heading south. Inflation looks like it might be ready for a comeback, but that seems like the furthest thing from traders’ minds. They’re fixated on the election in a little more than two weeks, and they see risk fading there. I’ll explain what that means in a second. You wouldn’t necessarily know it by the action today – volume was light despite $5 trillion in options expiring and despite the upside break on the S&P 500. But this week overall has been really interesting, and sets us up for some big moves in the not-too-distant future. We’ll talk about all that. Here we go…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Blake has something special cooked up for you. As we all know by now, today’s retail sales report was… inflationary… but it might not be a great thing for retail stocks. Blake’s also looking at the struggle-y, grind-y move higher in equities. He’ll clue you into the role inflation, gold, and the rising dollar are playing in all of this and how…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The tech sector… doesn’t quite know what to do with itself today. Nvidia rocked more than 3% to the upside after yesterday’s semiconductor slaughter. But Meta, which is about to find itself on the pointy end of a likely large lawsuit, was on track to close down nearly 2% to the day. And it’s like the rest of the market just stood by and watched. But I’ll show you in a second that, if you know where to look, you can find big, actionable strategic kinds of shifts underway – the kind that can make you money if you know what to do about it. Let’s get started…