[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] Word that Apple might let Google play with its powerful Gemini AI product sent both stocks strongly higher today; GOOG gapped up more than 4% by late in the day. AI is once again providing the rocket fuel for liftoff. The S&P 500 is pushing toward new all-time highs… but the FOMC will release a policy statement Wednesday in an environment that’s still stubbornly inflationary. So there’s a lot of potential for volatility, to put it mildly. That’s got big-money institutional traders reaching for their preferred hedges. The dot plot thickens… We’ll talk about exactly what this means and how we can turn it to our advantage right now. Watch…

[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 correlation between the Big Tech stocks and the rest of the S&P 500 is low, compared to history,” says a recently published Barclays note. I kind of agree. The big guys are right once in a while. But the note goes on to say that Big Tech/S&P 500 correlation actually spikes when markets sell off. That sounds like trouble to me, particularly because I see us on the edge of a volatility breakout. We’re seeing a monster, inflationary rally in stocks right now, with so many names stuck near 52-week highs. Investors are just plowing ahead with no worries about anything. It’s like fear has disappeared from the markets entirely. The VIX has, with a couple of exceptions, been in the basement for weeks and bonds are hovering near lows – a sign that the market just doesn’t 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] Few things can hit the market as hard as the American consumer’s mood. The impact isn’t always direct or proportional or even immediate, but it touches almost everything, and many stocks virtually live or die by consumer sentiment. Last week we looked at what sentiment will do for… and to… Costco. This week, we’re going to get into another bellwether stock, Nike, which pulled in $51.5 billion in revenue last year. Nike’s going to report earnings a week from today, so let’s see if we can connect the dots and predict what Nike’s upcoming report is going to look like, and what we can expect from the stock. Let’s get started…

[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] Everything’s got an expiration date – milk, bread, bananas… and derivatives. This Friday – day after tomorrow – we’ll see stock options, index options, and index futures worth trillions all expire on the same trading day. It’s called “triple witching,” and if for some reason you’ve never been through one before, you’re in for a ride. Buckle up. Triple witching happens just four times in a year, and we can see volume and price go crazy, especially in the last hour (or so) the markets are open, as traders try to get themselves set up

[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 headwinds are blowing stronger and stronger, but most stocks are still defying gravity and, in a lot of cases, common sense. All three big indexes were looking strong in late trading today. And this is all despite the fact that we got a hotter-than-expected CPI report this morning. But Bitcoin, which, along with gold, has been beyond hot lately, racked up a 1.2% loss by 2 PM. Ether was off more than 2.6%. At this point, a pullback in cryptocurrency could mean the market is pivoting to a risk-off stance. So let’s get while the getting’s good. There are a few Magnificent Seven stocks with favorable risk/reward ratios right now, along with some other names in AI. A lot depends on how interest rates finish this week. So let’s have a look…

[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] Maybe you were camping on a mountaintop or lost in the woods this past Friday, but Nvidia, one of the market’s most important, high-volume stocks right now, took a wild ride to close out the week. Options volatility exploded higher as the seemingly unstoppable bullish fever on the stock broke. Shares slid around 10% from their intraday high. Today, though, options activity was at a low – activity was just 70% of NVDA’s five-day average. So what gives? Well, we’re going to look at exactly what’s happening. We’re likely seeing the beginning of a wind-down in Nvidia, and the next chapter could be mostly bearish.

[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 indexes took a hit today. The S&P, which had been up nicely to new all time highs surrendered to the red at the end of the day. But saying “stocks are down” is like calling the Pacific Ocean a “puddle.” It doesn’t do anywhere near enough justice to the insane price action we saw today. Like the headline says, the sell-side activity is different this time. Meta, the “Sideshow Bob” of the stock market, was off better than 1.5%, but Nvidia (the Krusty the Clown of the market, I guess) got crushed today, to put it politely. The intraday volatility – which we’ll look at – tells a pretty ugly story. The Nvdia story probably isn’t over yet. We’re going to look at what the hell just happened, but we’re also going to look at the advance/decline and sector

[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] It’s understandable investors would assume that Amazon is a great representation of consumer discretionary spending – and the overall economy, for that matter. But I think I can go one better… It might suprise you, but I think Costco is actually the better yardstick, and I’ll show you exactly why. See, when Costco beats, equities and consumer spending appear to continue to rise. When they miss, Costco usually falls anywhere from 5% to 20%, and the economy gets wheezy. We’re going to look at all that in the context of inflation and jobs data – before those numbers hit tomorrow.

[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 was enjoying a bit of a bounceback today after yesterday’s selloff. Good news, right? Well, not so much. What I was looking at toward the close – and in fact over the past few days – is actually not great news for the market. We just keep seeing more and more weakness in the tech stocks that have been leading the markets lately. What’s more, when you look “deeper” into the ongoing rally, you see that volatility isn’t moving much at all. After heavy selling like we saw yesterday, we’d expect volatility to rocket higher. Didn’t really happen. And after a bounceback like we got today, you’d think the VIX would tank sharply. That didn’t happen. And that’s really weird. It’s not a great sign. The answer has a lot to do with the (soon-to-be former) Magnificent

[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] There have been a few times over the past couple of weeks where we’ve seen warning signals flash and stocks start to waver. It goes a little something like this: The mood turns risk-off, the mega-bulls calling the shots in chipmakers and tech start to falter, and defensive plays like gold and bonds start to rise. Now, I watch for these situations like a hawk, so we’ve been ready when these scenarios play out. And we’re ready to resume running with the bulls when they’re back from their profit-taking – as they’ve always done. I’m starting to see the same warning signs creep up right now, particularly selling in the usual market leaders I mentioned. Not only that, I’m seeing convincing signals that metals are getting ready to run higher – another classic “risk-off” event. The wind’s starting to blow