Only 2.2% of the S&P 500 Hit New Highs

Hello trader, At one point this month, 2.2% of the S&P 500 managed a fresh 20-day high. That’s roughly 11 stocks out of 500 pushing forward while the index itself sat near a record. Every commentator with a chart package found that number and reached the same verdict: The rally is hollow and the top is in. They’re stopping about two steps too early. So let’s go through the rest of the numbers together, because they’re worse than the casual observer realizes. Then I’ll show you the outcome almost nobody is positioning for, and exactly where on your screen it would announce itself first. What The Internals Are Really Saying Market breadth measures how many stocks are genuinely participating in an advance. Right now, the average S&P 500 stock isn’t confirming the index at all. Over half of the member stocks trade below their 200-day moving averages. The last time

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Why The Bears Just Lost Their Best Shot

Hey trader, Last week’s rate hike landed like a reality check for the bears. They’ve been throwing everything they have at this market, and the tape absorbed all of it. Bulls didn’t just shrug off the hike. They shrugged off the AI backlash and the geopolitical tensions stacked on top of it. The Nasdaq quietly outperformed for the third week in a row. Energy sold off. The Magnificent Seven rallied as a basket to new all-time highs. Last week did a lot of work. I’ll break down what the rotation tells me about this cycle, show you the handful of sectors holding the entire index up, and lay out how I’m getting ready for what comes next. The evidence is overwhelming that we’re in the later stages of this bull market. This is where the most fun begins. Welcome to the Next Market Stage Performance Leader 1-week 30-day YTD 1-year

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Why Rate Hikes Don’t Kill Stocks

Hello Trader, Kevin Warsh went ahead and did it. The Fed restarted the rate hike cycle. That upends the entire macroeconomic structure, because they’re tinkering with the price of money itself. Everything else falls downstream from that. But what if rate hikes don’t actually hurt stocks? Shocking right? Every economist on television would vomit their insides out if they heard me say this. So let me show you what the history actually says about hikes, where the money rotates next, and how I’m positioned going into it. Why Hikes Don’t Automatically Kill Stocks Traders keep repeating that rate hikes are bearish for stocks. History doesn’t back that up. The argument goes that higher rates crush valuations, borrowing costs climb for companies, and bonds start looking better than equities. Each of those channels is real in time. History still doesn’t treat every hiking cycle as a sell signal. In most modern

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Why the Crash Calls Are Weeks Too Late

Hey trader, The headlines this weekend were enough to make your head spin. Tech barons called for AI regulation. Saudi Arabia shut down oil pipelines. By Sunday night, the “big crash” calls were everywhere. Market internals have been weakening for weeks. The crowd is only noticing now. Their timing never ceases to amaze me. Let me save you the panic. That sector leaderboard everyone is pointing at is a weeks-old warning, not a fresh one. Tech has been outperforming underneath it the whole time. I’ll show you both, then tell you where I stand going into the Fed. Bears Are Getting Comfortable at the Wrong Time Performance Leader 1-week 30-day YTD 1-year Sector Energy (XLE) Energy (XLE) Energy (XLE) Energy (XLE) You could cut the tension in the air with a knife. One look at the sector leaderboard explains why so many traders are borderline hysterical. Energy is running the

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Old Assumptions You Need to Toss Now

Hello Trader, Markets change. What worked then doesn’t mean it will work now. Just look at the dollar and crude. Yet, I see traders run a playbook from a market that died five years ago and shake my head. How do they not realize what they’re doing? Their accounts erode over time. Yet, they blame the tape instead of the model. Nowhere does that show up more clearly than in the link between the dollar, oil, and interest rates. Those three got rewritten this decade. It’s time to change your thinking. So let me walk you through why the dollar and crude move together now. The bond market already tipped its hand on where inflation goes from here, and I’ll get into what it’s telling us. You’ll walk away with three adjustments to make this week. Plus, I’ll tell you where I stand on each one too. Why The Old

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This Winning Sector is Holding Back Stocks

Hey trader, Energy leadership took the long weekend off with the rest of us. It clocked back in first thing this week and picked up right where it left off, sitting at the top of the leaderboard. Bulls should be uncomfortable with that. Energy leadership XLE is leading over one week, thirty days, year to date, and one year, which is a clean sweep of every timeframe that matters. Sweeps like that have a track record. The track record isn’t kind to anyone holding growth. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq put in a strong week and got almost nothing from market internals to back it up. Price has run out ahead of participation, and that gap always gets closed eventually. Over the next few minutes, I’ll show you why energy leadership is a late-cycle tell. There are four catalysts landing between Wednesday and next Wednesday that could flip this tape. We’ll look

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Wall Street Borrowed Japan’s Money Runs Dry

Hello Trader, A large slice of the tech rally over the past few years was bought with borrowed money. The money didn’t come from here. It came from Japan. That arrangement started wobbling a few weeks ago. The pundit class has already decided it means a crash is coming. I’m going to explain how the trade works in plain English. You’ll see the one time it actually broke the market, why I think this time runs the other direction, and how I’m positioned into next week. Here’s the mechanic. Japan has kept interest rates near zero for decades, so borrowing Yen is cheap. A trader borrows Yen, converts it to Dollars, and buys something that pays more than the loan costs. That gap is the profit. Traders call this the carry trade. It gets better when the Yen falls. You borrowed in a currency that’s losing value, so the loan

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The Great Migration Out of Bonds

Hey trader, A colleague messaged me this week with a question a lot of people are quietly wrestling with. He couldn’t reconcile the list of problems stacking up in this market with how strong equities have been. His list ran long. Off-balance sheet risk in the AI buildout, geopolitics, oil, inflation, and total US debt all sat on the negative side of his ledger. My answer took three words. Wall of worry. In this article, you’ll see why that wall shows up in every bull market and why it rarely stops one. I’ll show you the capital migration pushing equities higher while bonds sit in a multi-year bear market. You’ll also get the exact framework I use to weigh the positives against the negatives before I size a position. Bull Markets Are Built On Discomfort Stock investors spend roughly 80% of their time below their previous peak in wealth. Only

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Bulls Need to Put Up or Shut Up

Hey trader, Stocks were down last week. Bulls struggled to regain lost ground on every attempt. Bears ran the tape on the momentum front…. …except for crypto and precious metals, which kept posting big moves while everything else stalled out. Tape like that frustrates people. It reads as distribution to anyone watching the index level and nothing else. Yet, the money never actually left. It rotated. There’s a silver lining among the bear flows in the immediate-term, and it has a lot to do with AI and the latest backlash. I want to highlight the sector gobbling up the capital leaving tech, and why it’s ripping with interest rates this high. But to do that, we need to see how current leadership is running out of runway. Plus the three things bulls have to prove before this trend is safe again. Bulls Seek New Leadership Performance Leader 1-week 30-day YTD

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Why Wall Street is Worried About Nvidia

Hey trader, Credit markets flinch long before stock markets do. That’s happening right now in a corner of the market almost nobody watches. Credit default swaps (insurance against defaults on debt) on Nvidia and Broadcom are spiking. Two of the most profitable companies on the planet, and traders are paying up to insure their debt. That move has very little to do with chip demand. In this article, you’ll see the five forces pushing those insurance costs higher. I’ll show you why crude oil sits at the center of the whole thing. You’ll finish knowing exactly which variable decides whether this stays a scare or turns into a real credit event. What The Insurance Market Is Telling You A credit default swap is insurance on corporate debt. The buyer pays a premium. The seller covers the loss if the borrower fails to pay. The premium moves with perceived risk. Rising

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