Author: Lawrence Chan

An eventful week of escalation of Middle East conflicts, FOMC interest rate decision and the quarterly expiration of index, stock and index future, yet ended relatively quite on Friday.

In a time of uncertainty, what’s better than hearing from Nassim Taleb? His takes on the current market environments is summed up right from the beginning of his words so pay attention to that.

To blow your mind off, here is a video with Arthur Hayes on everything related to cryptos. Ever since Trump’ genius act surfaced, the crypto space is no longer that detached from the traditional financial world. It is a good idea for regular folks to get familiar with cryptos …

This coming new moon June 25th is one of the most anticipated ones in over several decades. This video provides the context of why it is so important in astrology.

Have a great weekend all!

Another week full of surprises ended with a selloff Friday for the US stock market. Next Friday is the quarterly futures and options expiration so expect volatility to pick up starting next week.

The Middle East situation creates a lot of uncertainty for the financial markets. This can lead to a very difficult trading environment with very large gaps and volatile price actions. My suggestion to beginner traders is to stay on the sideline and observe what happens.

Cem Karsan just released a new episode of U Got Options with Benn Eifert. It is very educational and good for anyone who is involved with the financial markets these days.

On the other hand, Jeff Gundlach did an interview that outlines his takes on the current market environments from his unique macro perspective.

I find this post on X pretty much sums up what we are seeing these days on the geopolitical front …

This is rollover week so my team is busy working over the weekend to get ready for trading next Monday.

So better wrap up here and get back to work.

Have a great weekend all!

Another week of surreal market actions thanks to all kinds of bizarre news. So what to do now? Hedge funds are definitely forced to chase this market. But should we do that as longer term investors is a different story.

Personally I am leaning on risk off due to the way the market is moving. It is a continuous lack of clarity that drives the market moving in panic again and again. This is not healthy and any unforeseen event happening can have extreme impact on the financial system.

I am not the only one thinking about this. Here is what astrologers are saying about the coming weeks too.

And I find this discussion of China, from Peter Zeihan, a great summary of how wrong he is on everything. His problem probably rooted from his inability to understand that the world has changed so much over the past few years that it is no longer that important to pretend that one can easily predict the future based on some outdated beliefs.

Technicians are having a hard time with the current market environment, Chris Vermeulen’s take makes sense but it is hard to time the top given so many hedge funds are chasing this rally.

I am out of town at the moment with some friends to chill out this weekend.

I needed this break to review and think of what to do next for my ventures.

Have a great weekend all!

Last trading day of May concluded yesterday, creating another record for the financial media to talk about all week. The best performing May of any year going back decades. FURUs are all high at this moment talking about how this setup for another 20% rally from current level based on this one number.

Bulls are all excited while the bears are angry why their forecast of a crash not happening …

Both sides got this wrong – May performed like this because of the sell shock back in March and April forced Trump to pop up the stock market at all costs. He has been feeding out good news at every juncture when the stock markets are about to turn lower. Some people blatantly positioned themselves right before every single one of his announcements with huge position size, obviously knowing what to expect right after. Just once or twice, that can be coincidence. Now that it is more than 10 times in a row …

This means that Trump was in a panic all month long trying so hard to keep the illusion of a strong stock market up … can this kind of manipulation keep going or will we see a correction that wipes out all these artificial gains?

Simply look back into 2007 can give us a clue. Paulson, being a goldmanite, was the secretary of the treasury and magically the stock market kept grinding up without any meaningful pullback for almost a year. It was all headline news back then claiming all kinds of new records in the stock market too.

I am avoiding links to financial market predictions this week so as long to induce more emotions into my investor readers.

Instead, here is a video on how to reduce your heart age by 20 years spending only 10 minutes a day on average. If you are an active investor or trader, you will need that going thru the roller coaster ride in coming months.

Or, if you do not intend to take on this kind of challenge, here is another way to accomplish something great for your health. This is not something new, just not widely available say, 5-10 years ago. These days, I can find more than 10 locations across Toronto here offering the service.

When the future is so uncertain, people tend to look into the sky for clues. I find the sentiment among the astrologers on youtube are saying completely opposite things for June. Here is a scary one to keep you from having a good night sleep.

But do I worry about this kind of predictions? Nah … just to mess with you all.

Have a good weekend!

This week SPX moved lower thanks to Trump’s clockwork precision in giving out more tariff shocks to manipulate the financial markets. As such a short term correction has started and it can get very interesting should the rumored “Liberation Day 2.0” really happens by early June.

Lyn Alden had a discussion with Jimmy Connor on her takes of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”. Ms Alden pretty much explained all the short and longer term effects of this bill. It also means we should all be prepared to deal with the expected impact on the economies for US and the rest of the world.

One of the hot topics on X is the steady rising of bond yields across not only the US treasuries but also across all other major economies around the world. This is a serious problem for all these governments that have been printing money all these years. Their inability to attract buyers have many implications. Steve Hanke explains what will happen should this situation continues.

If you are interested in esoteric stuff that predicts the future, this video probably will stir your interest and keep you from sleeping well.

Have a great weekend all!

Another week of SPX rising higher thanks to non-stop announcements of deals after deals. The same question traders have last week is now again being asked. Are we going higher from here or is this a bull trap?

Chris Vermeulen obviously thinks that this is a bull trap.

Found this interesting discussion with Raoul Pal and Vlad Tenev, the founder of Robinhood, talking about the rise of Robinhood, and other interesting topics.

Neil Howe is getting a lot of attentions these days as more people recognize that we are now in the fourth turning already. In this video, Neil provides his take on the current situation and what to expect in coming years.

I have a lot of things to take care of this weekend so have to keep this short.

Have a great weekend all!

 

A relatively quiet week in the stock market while the world is waiting for “trade deals” is reasonable. As majority of the trading professionals are staying on the sideline, we have a new record of 21 weeks of consecutive weeks of inflow from retail investors into the stock market. If the short break in late December to early January is ignored, we have the longest inflow by the retail investors ever.

Is the worst yet to come, as claimed by some perma bears? Or is that this correction is over with new all-time-high coming soon?

Here is a more balanced view of what to expect down the road.

One thing that matters most for the world, is the news of Warren Buffett retiring after this year. The retirement of iconic figures are always omens to what is coming next to the world. When General Electric CEO Jack Welch retired back in 2001, that marks the end of US manufacturing and a new era of “financialization” of everything. Now that Buffett is retiring this year, I think the end of long term investing by fundamental valuation is here.

I find that the Spain blackout and the announcement of cash withdrawal punishment are potential alarming trends of what’s to come everywhere in the world. The infrastructures around the world have been aging over the years and majority of them are only maintained without modernization. So seeing bridges collapse, power grid blackouts and other man made disasters are likely to be happening way more frequently then the past.

The future of our world will be shaped by the relationship between US and China for sure. However, this relationship is very complicated. Sarah Paine sums it up nicely on what China wants.

BTW, my website is hit by several attacks these few weeks. In case you find that it is not accessible, just wait a little and try it later.

Time to go back to clear my inbox this weekend.

Have a great weekend all!